Welfarism and
Utilitarianism
Welfarism is the major concern in
this paper and its relationship to utilitarianism. This unique perspective of
utilitarianism is not necessarily presented when one begins to discuss
classical utilitarianism and consequentialism. Health care research and outcome
research are major tools for making health care policies. Cost- benefit and
cost effectiveness studies are utilitarian in nature. However, these tools are
often incomplete. Researchers acknowledge that the research is often biased.
They also acknowledge that many research projects neglect segments of the
population and many times the same sub-groups. This has raises many ethical
questions and concerns. Feminist groups often complain that many research
projects do not consider the concerns and needs of women. Rawls is in complete
disagreement with utilitarianism with respect to the moral value of justice.
Welfarism considers two outcomes when considering which is best for the
majority and leaves out non-welfare information, which is always necessary when
considering the whole of humanity. Paretianism is not sufficient either in that
it may only consider one or two non-welfare functions in the two vectors. The
purpose of this paper is look at authors who advocate either one of these
perspectives, but who are in total contrast to Rawls who believes that
utilitarianism can never be a successful moral theory.
When John Rawls critiques
Utilitarianism in “Classical Utilitarianism”, A Theory of Justice, he
does not specifically mention the concept welfarism
that had not appeared in the literature. However, his major moral concerns
about the theory are representative of the some of the concepts found in
welfarism. Rawls major concerns are, (1) utilitarianism does not take into
account how benefits and burdens are distributed in society, (2) utilitarianism
does not take seriously the distinction between persons and (3) utilitarianism
does not take into account the nature of the desires being satisfied. The
above-mentioned critiques of Rawls are explicitly stated in “An Examination of
John Rawls’ Critique of Utilitarianism” by Jon Williams, (Copyright Jon
Williams, 2001.jcwilli3@eos,nscu.edu.).
While welfarists claim that
morality is fundamentally a matter of the well-being of individuals, Rawls
would not disagree. However, welfarism and its corollary, parietianism, do not
include non-utility variables in the formula, which Rawls believes are
necessary for distributive justice. In the current literature, those who come
to the defense of welfarism are often economists who consider welfarism and its
moral content secondary to economic models.
Nils Holtug in “Welfarism-The Very
Idea” acknowledges that Amartya Sen coined the phrase welfarism, but that there
may be currently different versions of the theory. Holtug asserts that
welfarism is related to the theory of outcome value. Morality is a matter of
the well-being of individuals and that the value of outcomes is an important
consideration in this well-being. Holtug distinguishes that several definitions
have been suggested for welfarism, but in his exposition wants to clarify the
conditions that a principle should satisfy to qualify as welfarist, whether
plausible or not. Amartya Sen coined the term to mean the doctrine that the
value of an outcome is an increasing function only of individual benefits.
Welfarism, is a new term and philosophers only have basic intuitions about its
contents and implications. Holtug asserts that there is a basic set of
intuitions that can be discerned.
Holtug clarifies four conditions
for the meaning of welfarism. They are (1) the core welfarist intuition should
flesh out that the value of outcomes is fundamentally a matter of individual
benefits; (2) welfarism should not rely on any moral ideals that are neither
referred to or implied by this or similar formulations; (3) utilitarianism and
other theories that take individual benefits should be the currency of
distribution and ;(4) the final condition is that its meaning should provide a
principled and useful distinction between welfarists and-non-welfarists. Holtug
asserts that none of the standard versions of welfarism completely satisfies
these four conditions. When different versions of welfarism are used, they may
be appropriate for different purposes and the conditions that he clarifies may
not necessarily be announced. If welfarism fails any of these conditions, it is
not abundantly clear because there is no single accepted definition of the
term. The author acknowledges that Sen coined the phrase as the doctrine that
the value of an outcome is an increasing function only of individual benefits.
Many definitions of the term have emerged and it is plausible that any of these
definitions would not necessarily sanction the four conditions that Holtug has
set forth.
is is apparent in an article
written by Robert Shaver, The Appeal of Utilitarianism, it appears that welfare
takes on a different connotation. “I take welfare to be the concept of which
hedonism, preference satisfaction, or perfectionism are the usual
specifications”, p 237. He also substitutes welfare for utilities. He suggests
that utilitarianism survives because it values welfare and nothing else and in
fact, welfare must be a necessary part of the content of morality. It is a
theory that appeals to our benevolence. This definition may not satisfy the
aforementioned conditions.
Sen has what might be called a
standard version of welfarism that might not satisfy these four conditions.
“Welfarism is the view ‘that the judgment of the relative goodness of
alternative states of affairs must be based exclusively on, and taken as an
increasing function of, the respective collections of individual utilities in
these states”, ‘Utilitarianism and Welfarisim’, Journal of Philosophy 76 (1979)
p. 468.
It is important to consider the
relationship between the value of an outcome and the benefits contained in the
outcome. This is idea is supported by the suggestion that welfarism is the
monistic doctrine that only benefits have intrinsic value. The other suggestion
is the value of an outcome is a function only of individual benefits. A
corollary of these suggestions is that some definitions of welfarism insinuate
that there are values other than benefits that contribute to the intrinsic
value of outcomes.
Monistic outcome welfarism is one
way to help clarify that outcome values are fundamentally a matter of
individual benefits. Utilitarianism is characterized as a welfarist view and is
seen in outcome utilitarianism, outcome welfare egalitarianism and outcome
welfare priortarianism. The operative in the three aforementioned views is
outcome. Outcome utilitarianisms assert that the larger a sum of individual
benefits an outcome contains, the better it is. Only outcomes have intrinsic
values. The larger the sum of such value, the better.
As Holtug credits Sen as being the
father of Welfarism, it is necessary to recapitulate here what Sen believes to
be the major components of the theory. In the article Utilitarianism and
Welfarism, his intention is give a critique of utilitarianism, while not
discrediting consequentialism. He explicates the relationship between the
goodness and states of affairs and the utility of those states. Utility can be
understood as a person’s conception of his own well-being, pleasure or desire,
but not necessarily a definitional link with the goodness of states of affairs.
He specifically identifies outcome utilitarianism as the goodness of a state of
affairs (outcome) with the sum total of individual utilities in that state.
Holtug, in his definition, agrees.
He defines welfarism as, “any two
states of affairs that are identical in terms of individual utility characteristics
must be judged to be equally good no matter how different they are in
non-utility respects. Any state that has more utility for someone and less
utility for anyone in comparison with another state is a better state than the
other”, p 464. It is in section three of his paper that he deals specifically
with welfarism, i.e., welfarism as outcome morality. It is an informational
constraint in making judgments about alternative states of affairs. It also
states that when personal utility information about two states of affairs is
known, and then those two states of affairs can be judged without non-utility
information. Even though this does not preclude its use, it is here that Rawls
and Sens are in agreement with one of the major flaws of utilitarianism, i.e.,
important considerations are left out of the calculations. The two general
approaches of that Sen discusses for maximizing the sum of each person’s
utilities are a Mirrleesian approach with egalitarian considerations where
simple utilitarianism and utility based version of maximizing the sum of some
particular concave transformation of each person’s utilities. The other
approach that is not Mirrleesian is judging the welfare of the society in terms
of the utility of the median person in the utility ranking. What is important
in understanding welfarism as described by Sen is the sufficiency of the
informational constraint for moral judgments of states of affairs.
Blackoby, Bossert and Donaldson, in
“In Defense of Welfarism”, discuss welfarism as a normative view that lies
behind neoclassical welfare economics. They agree that welfarist principles
rank social alternatives, e.g. liberty, freedom of expression and a healthy
environment with regard to individual well-being. This article states that Sen has
criticized welfarism on the grounds that preferences and desires may not always
be consistent with well-being. They also mention that parietian compensation
focus on preferences as expressed in market behavior. In defense of welfarism,
thy believe that non-welfare information is implicitly fixed and that it is
impossible to discern the way in which a principle makes use of it. Social and
individual non-welfare information may vary across information profiles, where
each information profile includes a vector of individual utility functions.
Individual-specific non-welfare information may include length of life and
other variables that may make it difficult to make the chosen state of affairs
do-able.
In health care research, a
researcher may have a specific outcome and use a regression model to understand
the variance of the independent variables. It is difficult to control all of
the variables that may be deemed important. Demographics variables are
universally considered in these social science research projects. Often, the
researchers may have to leave out an independent variable that may be extremely
important, because its addition in the formula may complicate the results and
give a less accurate result. Researchers accept this fact and explain this in
their conclusions. However, it is disturbing for some that even excellent
research projects often don’t include important data across all the social
strata of our society. Utilitarianism ad welfarism do not give satisfying
responses for many ethicists as to the resolution of this problem.
lackoby. et al speak of
conventional social-choice theory where multiple profiles of utility
non-welfare information are implicitly fixed. They also employ the mathematical
language of vectors, axioms, functions and permutations when speaking of
utility profiles and non-utility characteristics. In a setting such as this, a
strong case for welfarism is made. They also claim that a social evaluation
function is associated with an order of the alternatives with each possible
information profile. This is welfarist if the ranking of any two alternatives
is given by the ranking of the corresponding utility vectors. They also speak
of an anonymous welfarism where the social ordering will be unaffected by a
permutation of utility functions across individuals with non-welfare
information unchanged. All permutations of any utility are equally good. Even
though non-welfare characteristics can justify special consideration, the
anonymity axiom requires that if both the utility function and individual
non-utility-functions are permuted, the social ordering are both
unaffected.
A strong case is made in favor of
welfarism when one uses an independence axiom with consideration of both
welfare and non-welfare information, with non-welfare information being held.
This non-welfare information may be as the authors states, length of life,
whether the person has a propensity to work hared and whether he or she likes
classical music. It is obvious that non-welfare information is limitless, even
though we can place a higher or perhaps more meaningful value on some
characteristics such as income, health status and education. When the Pareto
vector is indifferent because one is only including some non-welfarist
information, it still may not be enough to accurately say that one outcome is
truly better than other.
Howard Chang, in “The Possibility
of a Fair Paretian defines welfarism as “restricting the information that can
be utilized in ranking social states to utility information responding to those
social states”, p. 251. He states that this is the standard definition among
social choice theorists. In this paper, he conjectures that social welfare does
not depend solely on individual utilities that comply with the Pareto
principle. The notion of fairness in with regard to the Pareto principle will
always make a distinction between the two outcomes considered in welfarism.
Andrew Moore and Roger Crisp in
“Welfarism in Moral Theory” are defending would like to bring clarity to this
moral theory so that it may advance. Welfarists claim that morality is a matter
of the well- being of individuals or that some well being has moral
significance. They believe that many social theorists define welfarism in such
broad and robust terms, that it loses its significance. For these authors,
there is a suitable broad conception of well-being. There is a distinction
between one’s own well being that is conceptually distinct from the good of
others. There are equivalents of well-being that include a person’s good, benefit,
advantage, interest, prudential value welfare, happiness, flourishing, utility
and the like. The authors state that there is a three way division in defining
theories of well-being that have become standard.
The first theory is the
satisfaction theory, which resembles hedonism, taking pleasure in what you get
in life. In satisfaction theories, goods are added up and bads are subtracted.
The fulfillment theory, well-being is understood to be getting what you want,
prefer, desire or choose. However, what one chooses, prefers desires or chooses
is not always bring satisfaction which distinguishes the two theories.
Fulfillment theories appeal to the agent’s desires or wants and often restrict
to a rational or informed subset of theses states. The third theory is object
or ideal where the welfare-maker is ideal and is the perfection of human
nature. Objective theorists also maintain that well-being is ideal in the sense
that the constituents of well-being that enhance the well-being of anyone who
has prudential values. These prudential values are pleasure accomplishment,
autonomy, friendship and other related values. These authors argue for the
disjunction of these theories for they leave theoretical space for
non-welfarist views. Other vehicles of welfare that may matter are acts,
practices, institutions, lives, rules, character states, modes of thoughts and
similar concepts. They also speak of the concepts of temporal and personal location.
The past, present and time have fundamental importance when speaking of
welfarism. The question then becomes if welfare is past, present or future and
it is yours or mine. There are other welfarist views that attempt to answer
these questions such relative ethical egoism or act utilitarianism. They seek
to answer the question if any sort of welfarism is defensible in moral theory.
An adequate account of welfarism must tell us which individuals are capable of
well-being. One must give a detailed theory of well-being. This detailed theory
retricts the attention to those who are capable of it.
In closing this paper, I will
discuss briefly the philosophical views of a twentieth century philosopher, Charles
Taylor, who speaks of the ordinary life, utilitarianism and welfarism. In, Sources
of the Self, he writes about “affirmation of the ordinary life” as the
major theme. He asserts that human welfare has some origins in religious
sources and as one of the central themes of Christian spirituality. Modern
utilitarianism is a secularized variant of it. He argues that Utilitarianism
and Deontology are systematized and organize everything around one basic
reason, whereas Aristotelian ethics sees us as pursuing a number of goods,
i.e., virtues, even though we can speak of a single complete good. He points
out that in Utilitarianism that when we give a reason for a certain moral
principle, we relate A to B if B brings about a desirable end and we could be
morally committed to doing A. He points out an example of paying taxes for the
general good. However, if the taxes aren’t being used appropriately, this
relationship has failed. When speaking of the good or goods, Taylor makes qualitative distinctions between
hyper and higher goods that should have a place in moral life. He does
acknowledge that utilitarians do accord rationality and benevolence higher
motives, (Taylor ,
76-78).
In Chapter 19 of Sources of the
Self, Taylor
discusses that in the radical Enlightenment, the radical Aufklaer had an ethic
based on utility rather than a providential order. Judgments of right and wrong
are not based on a providential design e.g., the Laws of nature, right reason
or natural justice or equity. It is obvious that Taylor has a problem with the principle of
utility where the moral foundation is maximizing happiness. Stating Lockean
disengagement, the state of nature is where no one is born good, nor bad
according to the mutual interests or opposing interests that unite or divide
them, servicing the general happiness. The radical utilitarians rejected the
constitutive good of Deism and the providential order, but did accept the life
goods that underpinned Deism. These goods are the ideal of self-responsible
reason, the ideal of universal and impartial benevolence and the notion that
the ordinary fulfillments that we seek, the pursuit of happiness in what we
desire is worthy of being pursued. This focus on utility alone promised a
single-minded pursuit of happiness, as during this period of history, there was
a move from Deism to materialism and from providentialism to utilitarianism.
There was a shedding of the vestiges of old spiritual beliefs in God,
immortality, providential guidance, the immortality of the soul to the
attraction of the pursuit of happiness, benevolence and the image of nature
which underlay them.
Bibliography
Blackboy Charles, In Defense of Welfarism, Montreal , Canada
2002, 12,
February
Chang, Howard, The Possibility of a Fair Paretian, The
Yale Law Journal, Vol. 110, No.
2. (Nov., 2000), pp. 252-258
Crisp, Moore et al., Welfarism in Moral Theory, Australasian
Journal of Philosophy,
74; 4, 598-613
Holtug, Nils. Welfarism-The Very Idea, Utiltas Vol.
15, N.2, July 2003, pp. 151-175
Sen, Amartya, Utilitarianism and Welfarism, The Journal
of Philosophy, Vol. 76, No.9.
(Sep., 1979), pp. 463-489
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