UTILITARIANISM-UNCERTINITY AND INFORMATION
Introduction
Economists appear to have come face to face with a number of challenging issues in applying what amounts to utilitarian techniques to specific economic problems. Examples of such issues are changing tastes, the valuation of life and limb, uncertainty, and incompletely informed individuals. Perhaps one may say that it has almost become one of the hallmarks of a good economist to try to extend the basic utilitarian framework of welfare economics to treat such issues. Here the writer is an economist so ethical issues that he is discussing here is related to some economic issues.
Static Utilitarianism: objectives and constraints
Utilitarianism involves specifying an objective for society which depends on the utilities of the individuals in society. The social objective is usually to maximise a function which economist called social welfare function. This function as well as each individual’s utility function, is defined on a space of social states or perhaps more precisely, the entire range of possible social outcomes from all sorts of economic and related policy decisions. The author can argue that, when we come to consider more challenging issues such as uncertanity and incomplete information many common mis- concepions have arisen because of confusion of objectives and constraints.
To return to static utilitarinism, it is now widely recognised that utilitarian social welfare functions can be constructed provided that one makes the kind of interpersonal comparisons of utility which economists have so long wished to eschew, although not surprisingly much controversy remains over how to make such interpersonal comparisons. For the purpose of utilitarian welfare economist, an individuals utility should not necessarily corresponds to actual choices. Infact for the purpose of utilitarian welfare economics, at least an individuals utility should correspond to choices based on good self – interested reasons. This seem helpful , although the criterion of goodness here is certainly open to much disagreement , and even the criterion of self interest contains within it some ambiguities
Though this question of what constitutes individual utility is crucially important , it is hard to say much more about it, expect in the context of some of the challenging issues author propose to face in due course.
Rights and Liberalism
Here we are dicussing out how social choice which accords even with only the rather week utilitarian criterion of Pareto efficiency can easily conflict with individual rights. For example the rights to read a book or not, for a girl to wear a dress of the colour she prefers. He suggested that one should therefore restrict the scope of the Pareto criterion in particular and of utilitarianism in general. Infact he suggest that one should construct a social welfare function which respects individual rights. For example that property rights which amount to issues over which the government has no legitimate power to choose or to interfere with the individuals own choice. Such rights seem to take the form of consraints that nobody’s rights are infringed, and each individual chooses what he wants whenever he has right to do so.
John Gray's hostile reading of J.S. Mill's utilitarian doctrine of individual liberty and social authority is rejected in favour of a more sympathetic reading. According to the latter, Mill's doctrine says that every civilized society ought to distribute equal rights to complete liberty of self-regarding conduct. Although clarification of the relevant terms is required, utilitarian calculations are not needed to understand or apply this principle of self-regarding liberty because it is already a utilitarian principle. Mill's doctrine also says that every civilized society has legitimate authority to consider establishing rules of social conduct, although society may rightfully decide to adopt broad laissez-faire policies for some types of social conduct, including trade and expression. In particular, to promote the general welfare, any civil society should enact and enforce a legal code of equal justice which distributes equal rights and correlative obligations designed to protect the right-holder from suffering serious harms without his consent. Although its content may vary across different social contexts, an optimal code must always distribute certain basic human rights, including the right to complete self-regarding liberty. Gray's objection that such a moral and political project is defeated by value-pluralism is not persuasive. Under plausible conditions, any people seeking to promote the interests of all must consent by majority vote to some form of representative government with authority to enact and enforce such a code of justice. Value-pluralism itself, unless it endorses this project at least to the extent of protecting some minimum set of basic human rights, fails as moral and political theory.
The Challenges of Utilitarianism and Relativism
Human rights are usually said to be inalienable and universal, and some even believe that they should are absolute. Such attributes are necessary in order for human rights to protect all humans at all times. A prime motivation for rights in general is to ensure that no-one is subject to unbridled calculations of utility, so that a minority do not suffer in order that a great number enjoy some benefit. If anything is to stand in the way of governments or societies sacrificing individual or minority interests in favour of the collective, it is the bulwark of human rights. Similarly, human rights are argued to be universal and apply across political, religious, and cultural divides. It is tempting in a liberal society such as Canada's to view human rights as both universal and inalienable. After all, so much of our political debate is built upon these suppositions that we take their reach for granted. However, these qualities of human rights may not stand up under the light of probing scrutiny. Human rights are particularly vulnerable to challenges from both utilitarianism and cultural relativism. These challenges relate to the nature of human rights, the choice of benefits that are said to be a matter of human rights, as well as the delivery of these benefits. Further problems emerge when one moves from the abstract right of an individual, to trying to assess the specific benefits any one individual is entitled to in relation to all others trying to exercise the same particular right, but the situation becomes even more complex when the issue involves balancing competing rights or balancing the good of individuals against the good of their community.
At one level rights are those claims which protect individuals from being subjected to calculations of pure utility. The promotion of the greatest happiness for the greatest number cannot justify some violation of an individual's welfare, if that individual has a right to the benefit in question. The most basic utilitarian critique of human rights lies in the assertion that resources are scarce in any society, and especially limited in some. This scarcity inevitably leads to utilitarian calculations to allocate those resources in a way that will maximize the greatest good. In the end, it is argued, all the benefits listed as human rights, even life itself, are subject to the promotion of the greatest good within a society. As such an individual's benefits claimed as a human right may be compromised, diluted, or even completely denied in specific situations where that right has to be weighed against the claim of another individual or of society as a whole. This critique is not necessarily normative, in the sense that this should be the case, but may also stem from the observation that this is how societies do and will function.
Whether there is an inalienable right to life, safe from the utilitarian needs of the state, is tested most sorely in times of war; but it is also as germane in times of peace. Considerable debate rages over the conscription of citizens to defend the state or pursue the state's interests abroad, but the right to life can be just as endangered for those citizens who voluntarily join the state's police, miliary, fire departments, and coast guard, and who are subject to superiors' orders that might lead to their death. Conscription raises the question whether the state can take control of its citizens lives and send them to their deaths. Voluntary service in the public safety and security services raise the issue whether individuals can contract away control over their lives for the duration of that service. In both instances, the issue is essentially whether the right to life is inalienable and cannot be given up to another’s control.
Conclusion
Utilitarianism has established itself as one of the small number of live options that must be taken into account and either refuted or accepted by any philosopher taking a position in normative ethics. These problems, however, are common to almost all normative ethical theories since most of them recognize the consequences including the hedonic of an act as being relevant ethical considerations. The central insight of Utilitarianism, that one ought to promote happiness and prevent unhappiness whenever possible, seems undeniable. The critical question, however, is whether the whole of normative ethics can be analyzed in terms of this simple formula.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1.”Uncertanity and Information.” 01 September 2010. www.sfu.ca
2. “Uncertanity and Information.” 01 September 2010. www.informaworld.com
3. Hammond, J. Peter. “Utilitarianism, Uncertanity and Information” in Utilitarianism
and Beyond, ed. Amartya sen. New Delhi: Mans Saikia for foundation Books, 1999.
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