The Greater Good: Consequentialism and Utilitarianism

This article was written based on two articles from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy HERE and HERE to give an understanding of Consequentialism and Utilitarianism:

1. The Core Idea: What is Consequentialism?

At its heart, Consequentialism is a straightforward and powerful ethical theory defined as “the view that normative properties depend only on consequences.” In simpler terms, to a consequentialist, the morality of an action—whether it is right or wrong, good or bad—is determined entirely by its results.

This historically important and still popular theory embodies the basic intuition that what is best or right is whatever makes the world best in the future. Since we cannot change the past, worrying about it is no more useful than crying over spilled milk. Consequentialism is a forward-looking theory, focused on the simple idea that the right action is the one that produces the best possible future.

The most prominent form of this theory is Act Consequentialism, which provides a clear standard for moral rightness:

An act is morally right if and only if that act maximizes the good.

This means that out of all the actions available to you, the morally correct one is the one that produces the greatest total amount of good in the world, minus the total amount of bad.

This focus on future outcomes stands in contrast to ethical theories that place importance on other factors, such as past commitments. For instance, many people believe that breaking a promise is wrong simply because a promise was made. A consequentialist disagrees. For them, breaking a promise is wrong only because of its negative future consequences, such as making people unhappy or eroding trust. The wrongness comes from the bad outcome, not from the past act of promising itself.

The most famous and influential version of consequentialism is Utilitarianism, which offers a specific definition of what “the good” is that we should aim to maximize.

2. The Paradigm Case: Classical Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is the paradigm case of consequentialism. Its classic proponents were the philosophers Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Henry Sidgwick. Classical Utilitarianism is built on the combination of two core claims:

• Act Consequentialism: The belief that the rightness of an act is determined by whether it maximizes the good.
• Hedonism: The belief that the only thing intrinsically good is pleasure, and the only thing intrinsically bad is pain.

These ideas are often captured in the popular but misleading slogan, “the greatest happiness for the greatest number.” This phrase can be inaccurate because an action might make the most people happy but still be morally wrong if a smaller group of people loses far more than the majority gains. The true goal of classical utilitarianism is not just to spread happiness widely, but to maximize the net good overall. The correct calculation involves taking the total amount of good for all, and subtracting the total amount of bad for all, to find the net outcome.

While utilitarianism provides a clear answer—that pleasure is the good we should maximize—this claim has sparked a long and central philosophical debate.

3. What is “Good”? A Central Philosophical Debate

All consequentialists agree that we should aim for the best outcomes, but they have a rich debate over a fundamental question: What exactly is the “good” that we should be trying to maximize?

3.1 Hedonism: Is Pleasure All That Matters?

Hedonism is the claim that “pleasure is the only intrinsic good and that pain is the only intrinsic bad.” Within this view, two main schools of thought emerged, famously illustrated by a debate over whether simple games are as valuable as high art.

3.2 The “Experience Machine”: A Challenge to Hedonism

One of the most powerful objections to hedonism comes from a thought experiment proposed by philosopher Robert Nozick called the “Experience Machine.”

Imagine a machine that could give you any experience you desired. You could plug in and believe you were achieving great things, spending time with true friends, or doing whatever gives you the greatest possible pleasure. While you are on the machine, your experiences would be indistinguishable from reality, but they would not be real.

The argument is this: if hedonism were true and only pleasure mattered, it would be irrational not to plug into this machine for life. However, most people are reluctant to do so. This reluctance reveals a key insight: we seem to value things other than our own pleasurable sensations. We value “real friendship, knowledge, freedom, and achievements,” all of which are absent for a person hooked up to the machine. This suggests that pleasure alone is not the only thing that is intrinsically good.

This is a powerful challenge, but the debate doesn’t end there. Hedonists have a compelling response that hinges on a more nuanced understanding of pleasure. They draw a distinction between sensational pleasure (simple feelings of enjoyment) and propositional pleasure (the pleasure one gets from a state of affairs being true, such as being pleased that your daughter got good grades). While the machine could provide the sensation of your daughter succeeding, it cannot provide the propositional pleasure, because she wouldn’t actually be succeeding. A hedonist can therefore argue that the machine does not maximize all forms of pleasure, as it leaves out the value we place on being pleased about real-world truths.

3.3 Beyond Pleasure: Other Theories of Value

In response to the challenges facing hedonism, many consequentialists have adopted more pluralistic views of value, arguing that “the good” is more than just a single thing.

• Preference Utilitarianism: This theory claims that the good is the satisfaction of our desires or preferences. It neatly sidesteps the Experience Machine problem. If a person desires to have true friendships and real accomplishments—not just the feeling of them—then plugging into the machine would fail to satisfy those preferences, even if it produced pleasurable sensations. However, this theory faces its own challenges. It can be difficult to make interpersonal comparisons of preferences to calculate what is best. Furthermore, it seems to give weight to problematic preferences, such as those that are “misinformed, crazy, horrendous, or trivial,” forcing us to ask if satisfying such desires is truly a moral good.
• Pluralistic Consequentialism / Ideal Utilitarianism: Championed by philosophers like G. E. Moore, this theory accepts that there are many intrinsic goods. It holds that the list of things we should aim to maximize includes not only pleasure but also values such as “beauty and truth (or knowledge),” as well as “friendship or love, freedom or ability, justice or fairness.”

While all consequentialists agree on the basic principle of judging actions by their outcomes, they continue to have a rich and complex debate about which of those outcomes are truly the best.

4. Key Takeaways for Beginners

For someone new to this topic, here are the three most important ideas to remember:

• 1. Consequences Are Key: Consequentialism is a broad ethical theory stating that the morality of an action is determined solely by its consequences.
• 2. Utilitarianism is the Classic Example: The most famous type of consequentialism is utilitarianism, which traditionally defines the best consequence as that which creates the most pleasure and least pain.
• 3. “The Good” is Debated: While all consequentialists look at outcomes, they disagree on what makes an outcome “good”—whether it’s pleasure (hedonism), satisfying preferences, or achieving a variety of values like knowledge and friendship.

Sources

• The History of Utilitarianism: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/utilitarianism-history/
• Consequentialism: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/