Each counts for one

About this video

At the Riverside town meeting, a woman stands up with a notebook. "Let's count," she says. "Two hundred children use the park. Forty older people do. Each person counts the same. Which choice makes the most people better off, and by how much?" She is using an idea about 250 years old.

In 1776 the English thinker Jeremy Bentham wrote that what matters is "the greatest happiness of the greatest number". The right choice, he thought, is the one that does the most good, the most happiness and the least suffering, for everyone it touches, added up. Later the philosopher John Stuart Mill made the idea famous in a short book, Utilitarianism (1863). At its heart is the rule that each person counts for one, and nobody for more than one: the mayor's happiness counts the same as a child's, and a stranger's suffering the same as your best friend's.

This way of reasoning has real strengths, which is why so many people use it without knowing its name. It cares about what matters to people: whether their lives go better or worse. It is fair in one important way: nobody gets extra weight for being rich, powerful or your friend. And it gives a way forward when people disagree: look at the results and add them up.

But adding up happiness is hard. How much good is a swing to a child, against a bench to an old woman with bad knees? There is no ruler for happiness, and people make their best guess. And a deeper puzzle waits: what if the greatest good could only be reached by doing something terrible to one person? This video goes with The Greatest Good lesson of Ethics Level 1 on Knaph.

Transcript

1. 0:00Two hundred children use the park. Forty older people. Let's count.
2. 0:05Jeremy Bentham, 1776. The greatest happiness of the greatest number.
3. 0:11Each person counts for one. The mayor, a child, a stranger.
4. 0:17It cares about lives going better. Nobody counts extra. It gives a way forward.
5. 0:23But a swing against a bench? There's no ruler for happiness.
6. 0:29The most good for everyone, each counting once.