Last time, we argued about the case of the Queen versus Dudley and Stevens, the lifeboat case, the case of cannibalism at sea. And with the arguments about the lifeboat in mind, the arguments for and against what Dudley and Stephens did in mind, let's turn back to the philosophy, the utilitarian philosophy of Jeremy Bentham.
Bentham was born in England in 1748. At the age of 12, he went to Oxford. At 15, he went to law school. He was admitted to the Bar at age 19 but he never practiced law.
Instead, he devoted his life to jurisprudence and moral philosophy. Last time, we began to consider Bentham's version of utilitarianism.
The main idea is simply stated and it's this: The highest principle of morality, whether personal or political morality, is to maximize the general welfare, or the collective happiness, or the overall balance of pleasure over pain; in a phrase, maximize utility. Bentham arrives at this principle by the following line of reasoning: We're all governed by pain and pleasure, they are our sovereign masters, and so any moral system has to take account of them.
How best to take account? By maximizing. And this leads to the principle of the greatest good for the greatest number.
What exactly should we maximize? Bentham tells us happiness, or more precisely, utility, maximizing utility as a principle not only for individuals but also for communities and for legislators.
"What, after all, is a community?" Bentham asks. It's the sum of the individuals who comprise it.
And that's why in deciding the best policy, in deciding what the law should be, in deciding what's just, citizens and legislators should ask themselves the question if we add up all of the benefits of this policy and subtract all of the costs, the right thing to do is the one that maximizes the balance of happiness over suffering. That's what it means to maximize utility.
Now, today, I want to see whether you agree or disagree with it, and it often goes, this utilitarian logic, under the name of cost-benefit analysis, which is used by companies and by governments all the time. And what it involves is placing a value, usually a dollar value, to stand for utility on the costs and the benefits of various proposals.
Recently, in the Czech Republic, there was a proposal to increase the excise tax on smoking. Philip Morris, the tobacco company, does huge business in the Czech Republic. They commissioned a study, a cost-benefit analysis of smoking in the Czech Republic, and what their cost-benefit analysis found was the government gains by having Czech citizens smoke.
