 Ma nhw'n siwr a fwy fyddonbynydd pleidiau yn y croffhenhawn i Minister Prif Weinhardt. Ychydig weilå, Abervard. Dry нем datun usedb tylinar. A'n mynd roiheadwch Cafe aug wir idd dweud fynd i wyll â amser Ychydig bod angen amser. Lleon t'w'r cythigoricol i'r cythigoricol am ymgyrch. Felly, ydw i chi'n yn ddweud ychydig o'r cythigoricol a'r cythigoricol? Gweithio'r cythigoricol? Cythigoricol yn gwneud wedi bod yn cael ei hunain. Rhaid, dwi'n gwybod i'n gweithio i'w gwneud eich cythigoricol. Y Llywodraeth Hygrifol yw'r Llywodraeth, sydd yn cael ei ddweud o'r cyfrifiadau ac yn rhan o'r gwahanol cyfrifiadau, felly, yn ymwybod, rydyn ni'n credu i Llywodraeth, ac rydyn ni wedi gweld i'r 10 oed yn i'r 12 oed, mae yna yn rhan o'r 12 oed yn ymgyrchu i'r 10 oed, dwi'n credu i'r 10 oed yn ni'n credu i'r 10 oed, The categorical imperative can't claims you can derive the imperative, the should statement directly from a belief so no desire is needed because if you believe it is wrong to do something then you will also believe he says that you shouldn't do it a wnaeth ni'n ni oediad hynny, bo'r ffordd y llyfrnau hynny yn adeilad wedi gyrtu'r hyffordd yn nhw yn cael ei wneud o gyrni'r hyffordd. A defnyddio'r sydd gyda Lleihau Pwylliant. Cyfnodd, mae'r hyffordd yn y cofnwyr mwyaf y censur. Mae'n censur mae'r hyffordd yn gwirio wneud y pwylliant a'r censuredd yn cael digwydd gwahanol, That's the concept of right and wrong are intrinsically action guiding. They're the only concepts that are, and therefore they're the only concepts that, when they feature an belief, don't need a desire to motivate action immediately, in and of themselves. That's the difference between the categorical and the hypothetical imperative, and we looked at whether the categorical imperative is central to morality, ac yn unig gen i'w gwelio yng Nghymru'r Caen, mor hynny yn y ddechrau bod sydd fawr yn mynd, yn bwysig i ddechrau'r anghybdythau a'r anghybdythau ymrŷ. Felly, yn bwysig i ddechrau'r anghybdythau ymrŷn perthwag, mae ei ddweud i ddweud i ddweud i ddweud i ddweud, yn rwynt wedi bod ymddechrau sydd mae ei ddweud i ddweud, yn ddweud i ddweud i ddweud i ddweud i ddweud, Ond y persen iawn yn dechrau ystod am y cyfan yn y fawr? A rydym eich cwmweithiau yn gweld ar hynny sy'n fawr yna ychydig am ymddangos o argynaretadau yw'r own. A hefyd, y cwmwysau fawr y cwmweithiau yn gweld ar mewn mwy yw'r plwydau ac rydyn ni'n gweithio ar ddiwethaf. I've done something that conforms to the moral law, but if I did it to impress the person in the queue behind me, then I am not acting morally. If I did it because I thought it was the right thing to do, then I am acting morally. Not only does my action conform to the moral law, but I act morally in performing it. We then looked at Hume's account of moral motivation and we compared it to Kant's, Hume, if you remember, thinks all actions are motivated by passions, that reason is causally inert, that reason cannot in and of itself cause any action. So we can see an immediate clash between Kant and Hume because Kant would go along with Hume completely on every type of behaviour except moral behaviour, every type of action except moral action. Then we looked at the difference between Kant and Aristotle. Can anyone remember what that was? I mean, there are lots of differences between Kant and Aristotle, but we looked at a particular one. No, you're all an invading my eye again. This has been the most important thing. This is the thing that guides moral behaviour, whereas Kant would say it may be the result of moral behaviour, but it's not actually instrumental in producing things. It's not a goal. OK, I see where you're coming from. You're absolutely in the right ballpark. Actually, Aristotle too doesn't think that virtue is a means to the end of happiness. In fact, he thinks that anyone who tries to act in accordance with virtue in order to achieve happiness has missed the point because they may be doing the right thing, but they're not doing it for the right reason. Actually, in that Aristotle and Kant are really rather similar. Kant says that what's important is not happiness, but whether you're worthy of happiness. He thinks that you might be worthy of happiness without actually being happy. He actually thinks that someone who exercises reason well in the way that Aristotle recommends might actually be miserable because sometimes people who don't exercise reason are better off than people who do. But of course, we've got a big problem in looking at that because happiness is such a bad interpretation of Aristotle's eudaimonia that actually when you look at properly at what eudaimonia is, it starts to make happiness look to be the wrong interpretation anyway. If you look closely at Kant and Aristotle here, the key difference is just that Kant would insist that you have to be worthy of happiness, worthy of eudaimonia. But actually, if you look at what eudaimonia is, could you achieve eudaimonia in Aristotle's terms without being worthy of it? Probably not. Very definite no from Joan there. Joan, have I got that right? Well done, me. Okay, and then finally, we reflected on whether to side with Kant or Hume and we had a room full of Kantians last week. Do we still have that after a week's reflection? Who's with Hume? Okay, a few of you, who's with Kant? No, we've still got a room full of Kantians. Okay, well let's see if we can change that today. Okay, this is what we're going to do this week. I'll let you read that yourselves. Right, so we're looking at consequentialist theories now or we're looking at a particular consequentialist theory and what a consequentialist theory does is it evaluates the moral worth of actions by looking at their consequences and do you remember I said last week that an action always has the same structure loosely. It's always got an intention. It's the action itself and there are always consequences of actions. I don't know why I draw circles here but I just do. There's no meaning whatsoever in the circles. There need to be these three elements with respect to an action. If an action isn't intentional then it's not actually an action at all. It's just behaviour like tripping over the carpet. If it's an action it's got to be an intention as in pretending to trip over the carpet. But all actions, of course, have consequences. You don't perform an action that doesn't have some consequence or other. The consequentialist, as you would expect from his name, is evaluating actions in terms of the consequences of the action whereas Kant is evaluating the action in terms of its intention. So very different emphasis from a consequentialist. The most famous consequentialist theory is probably utilitarianism. Utilitarianism thinks that it's the consequences in terms of happiness or utility that matter, not consequences of any other kind. It's all very well looking at the consequences. There are lots of different ways in which you might think of consequences but the utilitarian is looking at the consequences in terms of the consequences for happiness as we shall see in a minute. We'll be more precise in a minute. Libertarianism is another form of consequentialism. That looks at the consequences of an action in terms of liberty. So that is another way of being a consequentialist but without being a utilitarian. Utilitarianism is the view that the right action is the action that produces or tends to produce and that or is going to become quite important later or tends to produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Now, that's the last time I think that you're going to see this written out loud because written out loud, do you see what I mean? It's just too long to type so you get GHGN from now on. Okay, so the right action is that which produces the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Now, I think if you remember back to human Kant and Aristotle that's the first time probably you've got something really rather useful in that section of my presentation, isn't it? So first you get what did Aristotle say? The right action is the action... That's right. The right action is the one that would be performed by a virtuous person and Hume said the right action is... That's right. A true judge would feel approbation for my syntax getting in a bit of a mess there. And Kant says the right action is that which accords with the moral law. So you need to know what the moral law is. But the right action is that which produces or tends to produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number. So we need to know what that means. We're going to be looking at the views of a particular utilitarian, John Stuart Mill, who's probably the most famous utilitarian. Maybe not. He's not the person who initiated the theory. Utilitarianism was introduced by his father James Mill and by Jeremy Bentham and Cedric, other people. But Mill may be the most famous proponent, but he wasn't one of the initiators. Mill's argument for utilitarianism, his official one, is looks rather shaky. We're not going to discuss the official one, but I'll say in a minute why it looks rather shaky. What we're going to be looking at is what appears to be rather stronger, his unofficial argument for utilitarianism. Here's the official one. As the only thing each of us desires is happiness, we all desire the general happiness. Happiness, therefore, is the ultimate end of human conduct and the standard of morality. Okay, we've done enough logic by now to be able to have a look at that argument. Tell me what a few problems are with it. If I desire my happiness, I don't see it follows that I desire the general happiness. Absolutely. Where does that come from? Where does that move come from? I might desire to make myself happy, but why should I care about your happiness? If I care about you, then maybe I have a reason to care about your happiness, but your interest in your own happiness is no reason for me to be interested in your happiness, is it? The first odd move is from, we each desire our own happiness, therefore we desire the general happiness. We might all desire a general happiness, but that doesn't mean to say it's the ultimate end. There might be something else, independently that's the ultimate end. Even if we all do desire general happiness, that doesn't mean it's the only thing we desire. Maybe there are other things. What other things might we desire apart from happiness? Metahappiness. Metahappiness, what's that? Beyond happiness. And what's that? Why might I desire that? It's easy to, it's inevitable. Right, okay. Leaving out ineffable things. Given that they're things we can't talk about, that being what ineffable means, what else might we desire other than happiness? What about perfection? Perfection, yes, we might desire perfection. Health. Health, yep. Liberty. Liberty, okay. On the surface of it, it would appear to be that there are a lot of things we desire as well as happiness. And that's as well as our own happiness. Never mind the happiness of others. General happiness. So, I mean, it's very easy to pick a lot of holes in this official argument. So, and here, I think we got all of these. Even if we do desire happiness, does this mean it's the only thing we desire? Does it mean that we desire the general happiness and actually we didn't get this one? If we're talking about morality here, the fact that we do desire happiness doesn't mean that we ought to desire happiness. And if the utilitarian is talking about the pursuit of the greatest happiness, the greatest number, as being the measure of morality, where does that come in? The fact that we do desire happiness doesn't mean we ought to desire happiness. Hume told us that you can't go from an is to an ought. So, lots of problems on the surface of it with that argument. You'll just have to take my word for it that the argument isn't as shaky as it seems. There have been reams written about this argument. And some of the arguments are very good to give different glosses on it which make it look as if Hume, sorry, Mill isn't making the egregious mistakes he looks as if he's making. And it's always worrying to attribute to a very good philosopher egregious mistakes. You should always have warning bells ringing very loudly if you're thinking what an idiotic thing to say of someone who's proven himself in so many ways. So, it isn't as shaky as it seems, but we're going to look at the other argument that he relies on in several places but never actually makes explicit. Utilitarian explains why it's implausible to think that our everyday moral rules are absolute truths. Do you remember in week one we looked at absolutism and we looked at whether we thought that any of our ordinary everyday moral rules are absolutely true. So, you get things like don't lie. Well okay, we all believe that you shouldn't lie but do we believe it as an absolute truth? Do we believe that it's always and everywhere true? No, we don't. I mean, we only have to think about when the Nazis come to the door and say, are there any Jews here? It looks as if it's your moral duty at this point to lie rather than your moral duty not to lie. So, even if we leave aside whether that really is the case it certainly looks as if it is. Actually, even if you take don't kill you can find counter examples. Did I see a question down here somewhere? Nope, okay. So, the fact there are exceptions to all our everyday rules demonstrates, according to Mil, that it's not to these rules we should look in deciding what to do. I should add there that he's absolutely not against their being used as rules of thumb. In other words, we use them because they're useful but he doesn't think that we should use them as moral absolutes as being always and everywhere true. So, instead, what he wants us to look towards is the greatest happiness principle, the GHP. Again, you can see why I'm using GHP. Okay, the greatest happiness principle tells us that the right action is the action that produces the greatest happiness of the greatest number. So, the greatest happiness principle is central to utilitarianism and it encapsulates the utilitarian claim that the right action is the action that produces or tends to produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Again, looking back to the first week we looked at lower order absolutism which believes that things like don't lie, don't kill are moral absolutes and we looked at higher order absolutism which is that things like produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number or treat others always as ends are moral absolutes. Do you remember? So, utilitarianism is an absolutist theory, not a relativistic theory as lots of people think and the reason it's an absolutist theory is that it thinks that you should produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number is absolutely true or the right action that produces the greatest happiness of the greatest number is absolutely true, true everywhere for everyone at every time. So, let's move on at the moment. Okay, in order to understand utilitarianism properly we need to understand what the greatest happiness principle means whether there are counter examples to the utilitarian claim and whether the greatest happiness principle is practical. Lots of people think it actually isn't practical. Actually, I just realised that I haven't covered this argument so I may as well just mention it now. Lots of people think that utilitarianism is impractical because we can't... How can we measure happiness? How can we... I mean, I know how to get my ruler out and measure feet and inches and things. Ooh, showing my age there. But how do I get out my tape measure and measure happiness? Well, what's your response to this? Well, David Cameron's thinking. He's trying. I'm not interested in David Cameron's beliefs. No, but you... Not right now. You can make an estimate of... You can estimate how you think it's going to turn out. Now, you may not be right, you may be wrong but if you were going to go along with this I don't necessarily... It would be strange to estimate, you know, go for something which you, in your estimation, have been a lower amount of happiness than... And you're implying that you think it's quite easy for us to estimate happiness? No, I'm not saying it is easy. Right. Well, that's what I'm asking. Some people think that we can know now that it's not possible to measure happiness. Did I see a formulation of this statement which made it time critical? Was there a phrase at this point in time? What's in my presentation, there isn't? No, I thought in the book. Some discussion. You didn't have to work out the greatest happiness to the infinite future. Yes, that's looking at... What you're looking at is the greatest happiness to the greatest number. And what I'm asking is, is it possible for us to estimate values of happiness to measure relative happiness? Well, the problem is, surely, you can have the minority with the moral right and the majority by other measurements. I'm thinking of the Nazi Jew. Can I stop you there? I'm asking a very specific question and I'm not sure you're answering it there. Forgive me if I'm wrong about this. But the question is, can we measure other people's happiness? There have been happiness in the interest of the year. Happiness in the seas? Right, okay. There are also qualities. Has anyone heard of qualities? Quality-adjusted life years in the NHS. You're a doctor, aren't you? Tell them what it is. So what's a quality in? You try and estimate. You say by a course of action that you will increase the life of someone by a year. And you will actually say, but is it a quality life year? So if you increase someone's quality of life by 50% for two years, then that will equal one quality life year. You would actually produce some index. And actually you actually try and work out how much it costs to produce one quality life year. And then you would actually decide whether somebody had treatment on the basis of whether you were achieving a certain number of quality life years for a certain amount of time. That's right. So a quality is a quality-adjusted life year. So if I'm going to... So this intervention I can do for you is going to give you two years at a certain quality. And the one I can do for you is going to give you three years at a lower quality. I can work out which intervention, given that I can't afford both, I should be able to... What is that apart from measuring happiness or quality of life if we're assuming quality of life and happiness? So there are definitely people who do think you can. And actually it seems to me obvious we can. If I know that Chris broke up with his girlfriend last night then I'm prepared to guess he's miserable. It depends how he looks when he tells me he's grinning now. If he looks at me and he says I broke up last night then I'm going to revise my estimate. But most people when they break up with somebody even if they wanted to can be quite miserable. I can also guess that if I come down and kick you in the shin quite hard this is not going to make you happy. I mean we're actually quite good at knowing what makes other human beings happy or not. And actually if we think back to the moral dilemma that we looked at in the first week do you remember when your mum comes home from the hairdresser and says what do you think and you think yuck? Well aren't you there looking quite a lot at what's going to make her happy over the long term, over the short term, da da da da. And again these are judgments that we make all the time. If we think of all measurements as scientific measurements then we'll think it's going to be very difficult to evaluate happiness unless we really go for qualities. And actually if you look at qualities how is quality of life estimated? Answer by the subjective assessment of the doctors or people who make these judgments about other people's lives certainly not an objective measure which is what qualities claim to be. So I think the practical objection to utilitarianism which is that we can't measure happiness thinks of measurements too much in a scientific way. Actually human beings are a good measure of other human beings. I can see understanding as it dawns on your face. If you ask me how I can do that, the answer is I don't know. But do you deny that I can see it? So I'm a good measure of your understanding without being in any sense a scientific measure. Okay so these are things that we need to know in order to understand utilitarianism. For a first thing a utilitarian an action is right only if it produces the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Very important it doesn't require that an agent must intend to produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number. You can produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number without intending to. You might have been intending to do quite the opposite. Do it by a mistake. But imagine that you're acting morally if you relax with a cup of tea instead of doing a voluntary stint at the Oxfam shop. If the only time an action is right is when we are intending to produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number how could you ever morally relax with a cup of tea when you could be doing some voluntary work? Do you see what I mean? So you've got to make a distinction between a prescriptive theory you should try and produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number and a descriptive theory which says when you act rightly what you do is produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Do you see the difference? The prescriptive theory says you must intend to do it. The descriptive theory says whether you intend to or not if you succeed you have acted rightly. See the difference? We noticed that Aristotle whether he thought the act or the agents came first was a bit of an open question. This is not knocking Aristotle. He was working a very long time ago. But our other agents have focused primarily on the agent and his reasons for acting and the utilitarian shifts our focus very definitely to the action itself and to the consequences not to the agent and his or her intentions or reasons. What we're looking at is the action. So here's an exercise for you. So Tom takes his elderly aunt out for tea and unfortunately as they cross the road she's run over. I want you to tell me what you think a utilitarian would have to say about Tom's action whether it's right or wrong and about what you think about Tom's action. So give it a thought for 20 seconds or so. I don't think you need more than that. Okay, that's enough. So what do you think a utilitarian would have to think? Wrong. That it's wrong? Okay. And what do you think? I think he was a nice challenge. You think he's a nice challenge? Sorry, what did you say? That he was run over. It would have been a bad driver there. It would have been either F Okay. What do you think about Tom's action? Was it the right action or not? You think it was? Why do you think it was? His intentions were good. But the consequences were bad. If you're a utilitarian you're only concerned about the consequences. Therefore you must still say that the action was wrong. But Sorry. Sorry, bit quick. What about the consequences for the lady? For the lady what the one was run over? If you look around the consequences weren't good for her. But that's exactly what she may have gone to a better place. Let's leave on one side the possibility of her going to a better place. Let's assume that she's not very happy as a result of being run over. Or at least she's less happy than she was before. Okay. But you're absolutely right that what's important for the utilitarian is he is not seeking to produce his own happiness or the happiness of those immediately around him or of those he loves. He's seeking to produce the greatest happiness the greatest number. That means everyone in space and time who's going to be affected by the action. So if you can think that your action is going to have consequences that ripple out over time and over space then you must think of everyone who's likely to be affected by that action in order to decide whether it's going to produce the greatest happiness the greatest number or not. Okay. So looking then we seem to have a problem then with utilitarianism. Tom had very good intentions old aunt out for tea she got run over so the consequences of his action have been bad absolutely unequivocal from a utilitarian point of view that was the wrong thing to do this was the wrong action this all feels a bit wrong surely Tom was a nice chap his intentions were good but the utilitarian can rely on the same thing that we've looked at in several of the people we've looked at the distinction between the moral evaluation of an agent and the moral evaluation of an action and although the utilitarian looks at the consequence of an action to evaluate the action he doesn't have to look at that to evaluate the agent if you see what I mean he can evaluate the agent by the agent's intention to produce the best consequences and if Tom's action had had the consequences he might reasonably have expected it to have it would have produced the greatest happiness, the greatest number, wouldn't it? and therefore you can't fault Tom for what he intended to do unfortunately because of what actually happened we have to evaluate his action as morally wrong and this is where you see that it's very easy in thinking about an action to confuse these three things to actually think of the three things as coming together if you're thinking of an action in terms of its intentions as Kant would want you to you're not doing the utilitarian thing you must be looking at an agent in terms of the intentions but an action in terms of its consequences you with me? so I suppose the question that raises for me is what's the utility of worrying about the actions I mean presumably we're getting it on to this it's sort of so what well the whether or not the action produced the greatest good or not I'm sorry that's the whole point if they do produce the greatest good they're right, morally right and if they don't they're morally wrong and I suppose and you're probably going to cover this it doesn't seem to be a very useful concept if they are purely we're purely focusing on the actions I think you're a bit wrong about that actually well I think I probably am covering it so let me move on one more question Tom could have taken a slightly different action by parking on double the yellow line so she wouldn't have to cross through yes and well that would produce great happiness for both of you and do you think that he would have acted rightly if he did that of course you're then looking at the action of parking on double yellow lines aren't you which is a slightly different action let's move on a bit okay the claim that the right action is that which produces or tends to produce the greatest happiness the greatest number I've written this out in full again I must be mad it's a multiply ambiguous claim huge number of ambiguities can anyone find any before I tell you what they are or tell you what some of them are why is it multiply ambiguous yes what do you mean by number here how many are we talking about the total number or the average number of people you might do something which increases the happiness immediately but in the long term decreases the happiness I don't know that that's not covered by this actually I mean because what it's got to do is produce the greatest happiness the greatest number full stop and if in the long term it doesn't produce the greatest happiness the greatest number then there's your answer isn't it there may be we may make wrong judgments don't forget our judgments are to some extent irrelevant here because what counts is whether it does produce the greatest happiness the greatest number or not not whether we believe it does I mean obviously in our intentions it's whether we believe it does or not that counts but somebody is judging in the end you know if we're not able to judge why do you think that well because that's how you're going to quantify the right action we can't know let's not confuse epistemology and metaphysics here I'm going to use this later but I may as well introduce it now dropping the bomb on Hiroshima was that the right thing to do or not well answer it was the right thing to do if it produced the greatest happiness the greatest number do we know whether it produced the greatest happiness the greatest number or not probably not there is a fact of the matter quite irrespective of whether we know what that fact is do you see what I mean but if we never know the fact then the argument is superfluous isn't it the utilitarian argument becomes superfluous no we usually know but it's not no we usually know but occasionally there will be times when we don't know does that stop it being true I mean there may be things out there that are true of which we know nothing does that make it any less true these things might matter a great deal to us I mean it's either true or it's not true that there's a meteorite hurtling towards earth at the moment I tell you what that we don't know that there is is completely irrelevant to whether it matters to us or not if there is it really does matter if when we say the right action are we talking about the particular action of this particular well that's something I'll get on to because another thing we might oh I'm sorry is that what you're offering as another ambiguity when you say this Tom took this arm to that T-shirt and then you've got all the it tends to produce so yes you're actually looking at all the Tom's with all their arms to all the T-shirts or all of us with all our arms and what tends being this okay so another ambiguity of the grace of happiness principle is precisely that are we talking about type actions or token actions that makes quite a big difference any other ambiguities you can see here if I try and visualise this as a picture this statement isn't it some sort of a graph visual imagination if we have you know 40% of the people being 80% happy I'm sort of with the doctor here I can't quite understand what that means does it mean that there are more people with slightly less happiness it's better than slightly fewer people with slightly more happiness isn't that ambiguous yes you're absolutely right but that goes back to the first ambiguity we mentioned which was do we mean total number of people who are happy which number of people you're doing very well so are we talking about action tokens or action types we might ask what do we mean by happiness here because actually the word happiness as we've seen is multiply ambiguous in itself do we mean the greatest total or the greatest average happiness so let's imagine that sorry what's your name ros okay let's imagine that ros is one of these people who delightfully is capable of huge happiness she gets really really happy when she's happy the rest of you are miserable now what should I do I could by concentrating on her raise the happiness levels in this room massively and I could put a lot of effort into the rest of you and raise it only a tiny bit well what am I going to do concentrate on her so so do you see where we get where what do we actually mean by the greatest number the greatest happiness of the greatest number another thing we might ask about this is the greatest number of what I mean could Hitler have been a really good utilitarian it's just that he didn't count Jews okay yes we've had a straightforward and sincere yes I mean some if you don't count women then your actions are going to be very different from if you do count women if you don't count animals then your actions are going to be very different again aren't they if animals don't count then vegetarianism is going to look very different from if animals do count isn't it so actually the huge changes in the implications of utilitarianism depending on what you mean by these things and the statement just in itself is multiply ambiguous and some people have thought of utilitarianism as a slippery theory because of this they sort of think well you know the trouble with utilitarianism every time there's an objection to it people redefine it and it gets away from the objection but I don't think that this is a good objection can anyone see why it's not a good objection you see it's not slippery you mean it's not good yes why is this not a good objection that's because you're slippery thought I mean you just think I want it all theories are developed all the time so everything will change good that's exactly right it's not a good objection because if utilitarianism on some interpretation is the right moral theory then it's our duty to find the interpretation that works isn't it and if there are 101 interpretations then we need to look at 101 different theories in order to see if any of them are right because our aim is to find the right theory not just to find one that isn't ambiguous okay we're going to look in what we do from now on at just two different interpretations firstly we're going to look at the interpretation of happiness what happiness means and then we're going to look at act versus rule utilitarianism that's type or token actions so let's start with looking at the nature of happiness mill's notion of happiness is much simpler than Aristotle's here it is by happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain pain and the privation of pleasure couldn't get much simpler than that could you when you think of the hours that we spent on eudaimonia well it shows you again actually that eudaimonia is not well translated as happiness okay but there's a disagreement between utilitarians about whether it's only the quantity of happiness that should be counted or also it's quality so Jeremy Bentham for example thought that it was only the quantity so he would think for example that well he thought that pushpin is as good as poetry pushpin is I assume some sort of table football there's something I have no idea what it is but you can imagine and you might think well pushpin is as good as poetry you could only claim that poetry was better from Bentham's point of view by saying actually if I write a poem actually this is hugely unlikely but I might give all of you huge pleasure and therefore there would be more happiness caused by my writing poem than there would be by my playing a game of pushpin and in that sense writing poetry may be better than pushpin but there's no sense whatsoever that playing pushpin is any worse than poetry in terms of the quality of the happiness that it produces so according to Bentham it's the quantity of happiness that matters not its quality da da da da da ok but Mil believed that we've got to also look at the quality of happiness so he categorised pleasures into higher and lower pleasures and he argued that anyone capable of experiencing both would always choose the higher pleasure over the lower pleasure now this obviously suits you lot because here you are attending a philosophy lecture instead of having a nap after lunch or something like that you might have had a nap after lunch or you might have had an extra glass of wine with lunch and be pleasantly woos well you might still be doing that but here you are attending a philosophy lecture and that's presumably because you think that you get more pleasure out of attending a philosophy lecture than you would from having a nap after lunch and Mil goes along with that completely he would think that attending a philosophy lecture is a higher pleasure than having a nap after lunch ok now this has caused oh ok ok the way Mil expresses it so Bentham thinks that pushpin is as good as poetry but Mil thinks that it's better to be crities dissatisfied than a fool and sometimes it's he says a pig than a pig satisfied and let's see if we agree with this ok think about it for a second so I find out what my next slide is so I don't tell you what it says ok yep what do you think are you with Bentham here or are you with Mil ok put your hands up if it's Mil put your hands up if it's Bentham ok right Bentham why Bentham why is it only quality that matters well I think it's very judgmental you know you said it's all right for us we prefer philosophy to a nap but if you go to a bingo hall you could stand in front and say say ok for you you obviously prefer bingo it's your highest pleasure to having a nap you know it's very judgmental on what pleasures are ok so you think Mil's a nasty Victorian elitist sort of thing ok is that what the rest of you who are go for Bentham think I think Mil also said that in order to be able to make your choice that you need to have appreciated or experienced both the high pleasure and the low pleasure I think that's the different between the bingo thing that maybe if those people at bingo came to the philosophy lecture they would enjoy that more well you've got perhaps in pursuit of what you're saying here what if somebody who came instead of coming to the bingo came to the philosophy lecture and it went right over their heads just didn't understand the word of it I mean that will happen with some people because in order to appreciate or have experience the higher great pleasures usually you've got to be educated haven't you? Yes well that's another reason that people think that Mil is an elitist that he thinks that you can't actually experience pleasure properly unless you're educated it's certainly the case that Mil says I think did I say something about competent judges not humans true judge but Mil's competent judge a competent judge is somebody who's having experience both the higher and the lower pleasures is aware that the higher pleasures have a greater quality than the lower pleasures so we all know that it's nice to have an app after lunch we all know that it's nice to have an extra glass of wine at lunch but we also know that it's nicer to finish that philosophy lecture sorry finish that philosophy essay and get a good mark for it and what Mil would say is that we know this because we're competent judges Why should we be ashamed of being judgmental in this? Don't ask me! That's all that boils down to personal preference I prefer to do philosophy therefore because I judge I'm a competent judge I am an app after lunch I think Churchill was a competent judge and he wrote books but he also built a wall and got great pleasure out of that now are we denying? but that doesn't mean he didn't get as well building a wall is maybe a higher pleasure I don't know now you're twisting terms you tell me what comes into a higher pleasure you're moving things around in the past for us aren't you ready? no you define I am going to in just a minute I happen to like ballet and I don't like opera but I can believe that opera is possibly a higher pleasure than ballet we're getting into hotter and hotter water here aren't we whether it is or not who's to say the answer is a competent judge anyone capable of experiencing both higher and lower pleasures would never agree to have only the higher pleasures says Mil Socrates dissatisfied is better than a pig or a fool satisfied okay let me tell you my gloss on this it may change your mind or you may completely disagree with it you're all immediately assuming that Mil's a nasty old Victorian elitist or some of you are no okay Erica's not but some of you are the gloss I put on it is this think of the difference between us and animals and also us and non-rational human beings in other words very young children well actually no I'm going to include young children in this what we can do and they can't do is form plans for ourselves form strategies by which to implement those plans and then exercise tenacity self-discipline in implementing those plans and achieving those ends now that ability which is not shared by animals is had by even somebody a child of five who learns to tie their two shoelace okay so the child those of you who have had children and have seen a child learn to tie a shoelace what does the child feel huge joy isn't it the first time it succeeds having tried, tried, failed got frustrated, tried again and succeeded and that I think is maybe a gloss on what Mill's saying he's not talking about higher and lower pleasures in terms of the way we might think of things as elitist pleasures what he's thinking of as higher pleasures is the sort of pleasures that human beings can have when they succeed in doing something that they want to do, that they've tried hard to do do you see how it becomes quite Aristotelian at that point because you've got to have formed a goal for yourself you've got to make the plan by which to achieve the goal then you've got to implement that plan and to implement the plan it may involve quite a lot of self-discipline so if I want to buy that ball gown I've got to, sorry if I want to buy that house I've got to not buy all the ball gowns that I want to buy in between goodness that's a very old example that I used to use when I was teaching undergraduates 20 years ago it just shows you doesn't it but that is the sort of pleasure that Mill's talking about not the pleasure of a philosophy lecture versus a bingo hall it's the pleasure of the sort of thing that a pig gets pleasure from having a nap after lunch having a big lunch having an enjoyable lunch and the sort of thing that a human being can do which is learn to do something it couldn't do before and the pleasure that comes from that is what the higher pleasure is not the pleasure that comes from the things that we share with pigs What about the sheep dog, her little sheep the young sheep dog gets obviously an enormous pleasure okay if animals are it's strategy and it's plan okay, if animals are capable of that then they too can have higher pleasures I don't think we need to make a set and dried thing about what can can't have higher pleasures but I'm just giving you a different sort of account of higher and lower pleasures that doesn't lead to Mill's being elitist in the way that the first one does do you see? No, I don't I think a pig's nap might give it exquisite pleasure because a pig's a and you really don't think that a human being gets more pleasure from because a human being can have a nap as well but I can't speak for another human being or another animal I can't make that jump and you don't think that a human being who chose to spend their whole life napping when they could do better than that you don't think there's something missing there that's their choice that's fine, but that is the objection to Mill the objection to Mill is there's no such thing as higher and lower pleasures there's just pleasure, full stop and all that matters is the quantity and you're with Benfam on this and Benfam is a perfectly respectable philosopher so there's nothing wrong with your view that's a really I don't want to say that this being self-indulgent it's what Mill thought when we were talking about it sorry, say that again it's what Mill is thinking that you're trying to get across it's not when we're really talking about it yes absolutely, what I try and do is put across what Mill said first and then what he might have meant second I don't say that is what Mill meant clearly a lot of people have thought that that's not what Mill meant, that he meant more the opera versus the bingo hall higher pleasures but I think whether Mill meant what I suggested or not you can take what I suggested as an interpretation of higher and lower pleasures and for me it takes away the feeling of elitism that the former perhaps will give you anyway let's move on so that's the ambiguity with happiness and whether we're talking about quantity or quality of happiness now let's look at the ambiguity about action types and action tokens if we say now you know this distinction from the first week again do you remember we talked about particularism and we looked at token actions which is a particular action at a particular time which is done by a particular person at a particular time, particular day etc and has all sorts of descriptions of it there is no other action that's identical to a token action it would have to be an identical action and that won't happen so if we say that lie is wrong we're talking about a token lie and we're saying of that token lie that it's wrong if we say lying is wrong we're committing ourselves to the belief that all lies are wrong and of course there are lots of different sorts of lies the lie I tell you when I say it's Tuesday there's the one I tell you when I rub my nose having agreed with you that I'll rub my nose only at half past three ok so if I do that I'm lying now aren't I if I do it intentionally I'm wanting to cause you to believe it's half past three so there's rubbing my nose one lie there's telling it it's Tuesday another lie etc so lots of different lies and we're thinking of lying as a type of action not as a token action so in the terminology of lecture one the second claim here lying is wrong is a generalist claim and the first claim is a particularist claim ok any questions about that before we move on very important you understand the difference between types and tokens yep good a particularist utilitarian is called an act utilitarian the act utilitarian checks each token action against the greatest happiness the greatest number so before performing any particular act an act utilitarian if he's a very good one is going to think is this act such that it produces the greatest happiness the greatest number see what I mean he checks it directly against the greatest happiness principle the rule utilitarian doesn't do that he's a generalist utilitarian he's a rule utilitarian and he uses the greatest happiness principle to check action types and then checks action tokens against the rules that this generates so he'll ask himself ok what about lying does lying tend to produce do you see where this is where the tend to produce comes in does lying tend to produce the greatest happiness the greatest number well it doesn't does it so you have a general rule don't lie because lying doesn't produce the greatest happiness the greatest number and then when you come to a particular action to see that that action is a lie is to see that it falls under the rule don't lie and to see that you shouldn't perform it so do you see the difference between the act utilitarian the rule utilitarian the rule utilitarian has a two-step procedure the act utilitarian has a one-step procedure the act utilitarian has a one-step procedure for checking the rightness and wrongness of actions any questions about that before we move on nope is the basis of that that the last one is the basis of that that it's more likely to have good consequences do you follow what I mean nope if the with rule consequences is the basis of that I mean I can see you logically spell the basis out there but it's also the argument that you're likely to have better consequences the argument is that it's only the consequences of an action that matter but the rule utilitarian is concerned about the consequences of action types rather than the consequence well and the consequences of action tokens but it measures the consequences of action types against the consequences of action tokens whereas act utilitarian cuts out that middle step so rule utilitarian has seemed attractive to some because act utilitarian can only recognise rules of thumb so rules based on past experience so if in your experience lying has nearly always ended in tears then the rule don't lie is for an act utilitarian a useful reminder of that but the rule don't lie has no more status than that it's just a rule of thumb it's just based on your past experience so utilitarianism is actually an inductive morality it says that we get moral rules from our experience from observation and experience which is very definitely not Kant's belief Kant believes that moral judgments are a priori made without experience whereas for a utilitarian you have to have experience in order to make moral judgments so act utilitarianism can only recognise rules of thumb can't give moral rules like that any more status than that so when lying would clearly promote the greatest happens the greatest number the act utilitarian just goes straight ahead and lies so another example here is Jim and the Indians put your hand up if you've heard of this oh good am I telling it for the first time I can't believe it okay Jim and the Indians there's Jim who's an anthropologist who's being travelling through the jungle and unfortunately he gets captured by a bandolero does that sound convincing? anyway you know what I mean some sort of big they're in South America and he's some sort of big wig in South America and he's already got 20 Indians captive and he says look I can see you're a big white man sort of thing I'm going to give you a gun and what I want you to do is to shoot one of these Indians and then we'll let the others go and I'm going to shoot one of them I'm going to shoot all of them now if you're an act utilitarian some people say Jim should just see immediately that it's right to shoot the one Indian take out the gun and shoot him but most of us would say it doesn't work like that even if on reflection it does seem right to shoot the one Indian it surely isn't obviously right is it it's surely not something that we're we're going to say alright I did the right thing you know I don't have any guilt I don't have any problem with that because the numbers were right I've done it and it looks as if the act utilitarian rather can't explain that failure of integrity we might say because it really does look to us that even if in the end we do decide it's right to shoot the Indian it still doesn't seem right obviously in the way it should be if act utilitarianism is right so a lot of people have thought trouble with act utilitarianism is it doesn't give moral rules like don't lie don't kill etc the right moral force it doesn't give them enough moral force so certainly the rules moral rules for an act utilitarian don't have day ontological force but actually they don't even have more force than a rule of thumb and we do sometimes think that rules have day ontological force or actually I'm wishing here I hadn't put day ontological force but certainly we want to say they don't have more force than that I mean who agrees with me that it's not obviously right to shoot the Indian even if it is right to shoot the Indian okay and why do we think that because actually the rule don't kill is pretty deeply embedded in us isn't it and also what about if I could vulgar no I got it that time sadly vulgar well no actually it's not sad to see one in this row of one, two, three, four, five, six people here the rest of you are doddery exactly da da da but I could make you all healthy by killing him and taking out his various organs and handing them on to you now shouldn't I do that what do you think vulgar no no they all think it's fine I'm asking you okay again we've got something where it looks as if and obviously this is a pretty knee jerk example and we need to ask lots more questions about this because actually we'd all feel pretty uncomfortable and not very happy if we thought that that was something that might happen at any moment isn't it so you can ask questions about this but on the surface of it looks as if I ought to kill vulgar give his organs to you lot therefore produce six happy people where before there was only one the only thing I'm saying is that it's one against six and the utilitarian on the surface of it and I'm really stressed on the surface of it looks as if they're going to answer I should sacrifice vulgar and yet we actually don't we don't think that do we at all we think it's utterly wrong to kill vulgar in order to make six of you healthier and that's because our moral rules have much more force at least on the surface than the act utilitarian seems to give them is this the difference between to kill and to let die well no I mean it comes in here you might say that killing is one thing letting die is another but actually that's irrelevant to what I'm talking about these six people you're going to cure you're letting them die whereas you're killing vulgar if I don't kill vulgar to save them I'm letting them die yes and you might think that I'm not responsible for that but that is a different matter all I'm talking about here is I want you to see that the act utilitarian would say that if the numbers come out right then our moral rules are irrelevant we just go ahead and do whatever it is that the numbers tell us to do and that is the right action and it leaves a lot of people with a rather uncomfortable feeling that we're not giving proper honour to our intuition that it's wrong to kill that it's wrong to lie etc I want to ask about experience a judgment you mentioned experience in the room but we're forgetting the experience of judgment in that because you should delay for the individual to practice that judgment to decide whether eventually you could preserve them all well it might be that if I don't kill vulgar now you're all going to die by tomorrow I might not have the time oh I'm a very experienced doctor as you know I mean you notice I'm going to perform this operation be very afraid there was a question here somewhere nope ok right ok so we do sometimes think that rules have down to logic force ok this is the one that I think you were talking about earlier was it you or you I can't remember anyway have a look at this actually I'm going to read it out to you for the sake of the people on the podcast hello everyone on the podcast ok this is a possible counter example do you remember I said that we need to see are there any actions that are right but that don't produce the grace happiness grace number or that are wrong and do produce the grace happiness of grace number and here's a possible counter example the populace of a small US town a living in fear because a series of horrific rape murders the newly appointed but not yet trusted sheriff knows the culprit is dead because he shot him but no one saw him do this him the sheriff do this and the body fell into a fast flowing river and disappeared so he can't now prove that he shot him but last week the sheriff locked up a vagrant who is suicidal really wants to die claiming to have lost his whole family all his possessions all his friends etc in a disaster so nobody cares whether he lives or dies either what the sheriff thinks if he finds proof and notice the scare quotes around it here that the vagrant committed the crime obviously there must be scare quotes around the proof because the vagrant didn't commit the crime but he tries convicts and hangs him this will make everyone happy won't it it will get everyone off his back it will make all the populace of this small town happy it will also make the tramp happy because he wants to die clearly it's the right thing to do isn't it well is it why not sorry which what's morally wrong the other one why because after all we're showing that what the sheriff's doing here is producing the greatest happiness the greatest number aren't we and utilitarianism says that the right action is the action that produces the greatest happiness the greatest number well I've sort of tried to push enough into this to make it very unlikely he's going to be found out I mean can you find a way of in which he might be found out I mean does that matter anyway I mean if nobody ever finds out they will be made happier it's true that if anyone found out they wouldn't be happier but he's got to make a decision and certainly it looks pretty foolproof doesn't it it goes against an idea of justice that doesn't happen this doesn't address goodness you are all deontologists aren't you I think I should have taken a different tack on this well because they don't trust him he's a new sheriff and the body went into the river I mean it obviously he's just going to say that the other chap did it isn't he because he wants to do you see what I mean so nobody's going to believe him if he tries to convince them and do you think his unhappiness no let's say that the sheriff is just not that sort of guy he's the sort of person who can take out his gun and shoot an engine without even thinking about it okay you think it is the right thing to do oh so it's not here's the right thing to do but here's the right thing to do as well and in the Indian one good I'm glad we've got at least one utilitarian here okay so you too think it goes against our feeling of justice it goes okay this is okay I'm feeling slightly distressed here because I feeling I've given you the impression now that utilitarianism is obviously wrong and this is not what I intended to do I mean what hang on just a second every single week what I've tried to do is present the strongest possible case for each moral theory I've done now you should know that I can't embrace them all so you should know that I'm not giving you what I believe but what I am trying to do is and the thing about utilitarianism the examples I've given you may not be right but what about this in the war Churchill and I understand this is a true story there were bombers coming over and the decision was made to distract them and make them drop their bombs on a small village on the coast as opposed to London I'm sure I've got the details wrong assume I've got the details wrong I'm not claiming any historical accuracy here but what would Churchill have been right to have done that to have dropped the bombs on the small village as opposed to dropping the bombs on London where they would have led to many many more lives being lost many many more people being lost no hang on my intuitions at this point think yes Churchill was right and here's another time when I think it would have been right perhaps to act on a utilitarian belief so and this is also a true story a ship on fire off the coast of Australia four people in the engine room hundreds of sailors on the ship the only way of stopping the fire was to cut off the oxygen in the engine room thereby killing the four sailors in the engine room but saving the other hundreds of sailors on the ship should the captain have turned off the oxygen or not who thinks he should so you see you have got some utilitarian intuitions here sometimes numbers do counts don't they what do you think the difference is here why is it not acceptable to kill Volker these six people alive but it is acceptable to kill the four sailors on the ship or actually the four sailors on the ship might have died anyway or would have died anyway but let's go back to the Churchill example why is it okay to bomb the small village instead of the larger village let's make it easier okay but lots of people thought it was so off the people who thought it was okay but what about the London and the smaller village we could make the proportions equal here it's one to six so let's say there are 100 people in the small village and 600 people who would have been killed in London so the proportions are the same and we know for sure that the 600 will die unless you kill the 100 does that change your mind well no let's leave complications like that out of it no we don't know for sure clearly we don't but we were supposing that we could know for sure just here and I was saying let's say we could know for sure what we're doing here is we're spinning the possible worlds we're trying different thought experiments to see why sometimes our intuitions are for utilitarianism and sometimes they're not and I'm slightly afraid that the way I presented it before I was bringing out all your anti-utilitarian intuitions especially having exercised all your Kantian ones last week and I just want to redress the balance actually we do have very strong utilitarian intuitions I mean let's go back to qualities actually the decisions about healthcare spending are huge and they are really difficult biotechnology is advancing at such a rate that every time you get a new technology you get another million people immediately on the waiting list the waiting lists are expanding and the money which is even smaller than it was last year hard decisions have to be made how are we supposed to make those decisions actually qualities as a way of making them do you say instead well okay anyone who's older should not get treatment you could say that you could say anyone who's not mentally competent or not physically fit doesn't get treatment you could say that that's another one you could say anyone who's contributed to their own ill health shouldn't get it so smokers shouldn't get lung transplants and so on all these things have quite big objections to them qualities is at least an attempt to make an objective decision an impartial decision as to who should get what treatment and actually the thing about utilitarianism is that's what it's doing it's an attempt to be impartial it uses the same universalising elements as canteonism does actually can anyone tell me how it does that how is utilitarian a universalising creed in the same way that canteonism is can anyone think why that might how that might work it's a rationalistic thing is it fact that I suppose they come from a rational basis no because one comes from a demonstrative or deductive basis an a priori basis and the other from an inductive or probabilistic basis utilitarianism is an inductive creed actually what it is is again the greatest happens to the greatest number and the decision you make is supposed to be impartial isn't it you're looking at everyone and you're saying you know my action must make for the greatest happiness of the greatest number I mustn't consider myself I mustn't put myself or those I love first so there's the same universalising element in it it seems to me sometimes to make the correct decision particularly in the case you've got on the screen you're making something that's very very difficult and could leave you yourself very unhappy about it that doesn't mean to say it's a wrong decision well somebody else also said that well absolutely I mean if you like, if you see Churchill as the name of the sheriff here haven't we got structurally exactly the same decision so should we say to Churchill that he shouldn't have done that he should have just left the planes alone to come and do whatever they were going to do with London rather than take action that guaranteed that they were going to kill the 100 people in the village isn't that doing the same thing as the sheriff would do if he hanged the tramp and if you think it's okay in Churchill's case why don't you think it's okay here now that's the really interesting philosophical question and that's the question you need to go away and think about because what you're doing here you've got two structurally similar cases and your intuition's coming out yes in one case and no in the other so there must be something different about them and what you need to do is to work out what those differences are and why the two situations bring out different intuitions but let's move on because we've only got five minutes okay if the act utilitarian is happy to break rules every time he thinks it'll promote the greatest happiness, the greatest number then doesn't he fail, we've done this doesn't he fail to recognise the proper force and moral rules and rule utilitarian enables the utilitarian to insist that utilitarianism does recognise the proper and I wish I hadn't put down to logical so scrub that out proper force of everyday moral rules we should always tell the truth because generally speaking truth telling promotes the greatest happiness of the greatest number but okay so that's the argument for rule utilitarian is it satisfies those intuitions that you all had really very strongly that justice wasn't done by hanging the innocent tramp in the cells but it has been claimed that rule utilitarian collapses into act a rule utilitarian has three possible responses he could make to the situation in which the greatest happiness, the greatest number demands that a rule be broken doesn't he either he should keep the rule or he should break the rule or he should modify the rule so here's a rule don't lie and he comes across the situation in which the Nazis are asking are there any Jews here well what's he going to do is he going to keep the rule he's going to refuse to lie oh no no don't give me an answer I'm just going through the options or he could break the rule he could just tell a lie or he could modify the rule and say something like well okay you should tell the truth or am I right except in circumstance C okay well the trouble with this is if the rule utilitarian keeps the rule then isn't he a deontologist masquerading as a utilitarian um do you see what I mean if he keeps the rule even when it would obviously produce the greatest happiness, the greatest number to break it he's a deontologist really isn't he if he breaks the rule isn't he treating the rule as a rule of thumb and he's really just an act utilitarian isn't he so what if he modifies the rule that's the only one that's going to make any difference between act and rule utilitarianism so imagine he modifies the rule to read do a except in circumstance C and the next time he meets an exception he's going to modify it again to read do a except in circumstance C and C1 I can see that you can see where I'm going in effect the rule utilitarian is only going to perform exactly those actions which an act utilitarian is going to perform isn't he and if that's so there's not really any difference between them is there um I mean they come out to be exactly the same thing so they're extensional equivalents but intentional non equivalents for those of you who know the jargon usually I would explain that to you but I'm not going to we'll do it next week if you're really interested so on this story the RU is never going to actually act differently from an act utilitarian so how can his theory count as different it can't really but the collapse of RU into AU can be resisted by recognition of these two things and what I'm going to give you now is a very short canter through a paper called by a chap called John Rawls whom you've already heard of called two concepts of rules which is a really good paper and if you get a chance do read it if we recognize that different people to play different roles in respect of rules and we recognize that there are two sorts of rules in everyday life then we can see that RU can be saved from the collapse and here's how we do it a legislator somebody in the houses of parliament has got to decide whether a certain laws should be made and certain practices introduced but a judge once the law has been made the judge doesn't look to anything but the law itself does he so the MP or whoever is deciding well should we have a law that there should be identity cards or something like that but once there is a law introduced that we must carry identity cards and you end up in court for not carrying one the judge can't say well should we carry identity cards or not this is not his job is it what he's thinking of is did this person not carry an identity card is there a law that says you must carry an identity card if the answer to those things is both yes then you are guilty so the legislator looks directly to the greatest happiness principle to decide which laws will produce the greatest happiness and the greatest number so he's acting as an act utilitarian see what I mean and once the law is introduced the judge looks to the law not to the greatest happiness principle so he acts as a rule utilitarian so it's very easy when rule utilitarian and act utilitarian are introduced to think that either you're one or the other but actually that's not true at all it doesn't work that way the judge when he's wearing his legislator's hat as he does occasionally is acting as an act utilitarian not a rule utilitarian see what I mean it depends on what his role in society is also in everyday life there are two sorts of rules there are rules that summarise past decisions made in particular cases so if I've seen every time I've told a liar it's led to tears usually mine I'm going to start thinking don't lie is a good rule that's a summary rule do you see what I mean it's based on inductive evidence but then there are also rules that define a practice and that must be treated as a practice so say that Ross and I decide to play chess having decided we'll play chess I've decided that my king's going to be able to move right across the board and take your queen that's not on is it no because once I've taken on the practice of playing chess I also take on the rules and I can no longer decide myself what the rules are so in the same way you don't have to marry but if you do marry you take on certain rules that you are then bound by and so on so a summary rule can be broken whenever the greatest happiness principle suggests that it should be but anyone acting on a summary rule is going to be acting as an act utilitarian but one who chooses to adopt a practice that's governed by rules thereby commits himself to looking to the rules to decide what to do not directly to the greatest happiness the greatest number so he's got to act as a rule utilitarian so often in life we act as rule utilitarians often in life we act as act utilitarians and when we're wearing different hats in different parts of our lives we are committed to acting as one or the other so actually the rules are a lot more complicated than the traditional dichotomy between rule utilitarian and act utilitarianism would have us believe so it's far more complicated than we might have thought okay we're going to this I can do very quickly because I've actually already done it in reply to something down there what would a utilitarian have to say about the truth of the claim dropping the bomb on Hiroshima was the right thing to do what would they have to say they wouldn't have to say anything would they because all they'd have to say is if dropping the bomb led to the greatest happiness the greatest number then it was right if dropping the bomb didn't lead to the greatest happiness the greatest number then it was wrong so utilitarianism is if you like a decision procedure not a decision made so we'll never know whether it's true or false whether dropping the bomb was the right thing to do or not but it doesn't mean that it isn't either true or false the utilitarian can be a moral realist is a moral realist usually the fact that makes moral statements true or false are not independent of us if there were no conscious subjects there wouldn't be any happiness would there but do you remember I said in answer to a question recently there are objective facts about subjective states of affairs aren't there so either John isn't it Mike sorry your John either Mike believes that Marian's wearing a red dress or he doesn't it's an objective fact about Mike that either he believes that or not but his belief that I'm wearing a red dress is a subjective state isn't it a state of Mike's as a subject so we mustn't confuse objective and subjective in an unhelpful way obviously okay so the facts that make true the claims about right and wrong are not entirely facts about sorry that don't involve subjects does not make the utilitarian an anti realist okay what's all this about okay this is a bit about the utilitarian as an inductivist he forms his beliefs about right or wrong on observation and induction not as Kant would have it a priori alright there we are there we are and that's where I'm going to end I'm five minutes late questions to test your understanding and there's no reading for next week because what you're going to do next week is you are going to do the work and you're going to come I might give a brief introduction and just a summary of things but you're going to ask me questions and we're going to look at all the theories and the point of next week is that we need to try and draw the different strands together because we've had a canter through a lot of theories and we need to draw the strands together and try and make sense of what we've been thinking about okay so that's next week come armed with lots of questions