Question

Is there any way of measuring how much happiness is brought about by an action? Do we have any method for comparing the happiness of two different people? If the answer is no, is there a problem for utiliitaritanism?

Answer 1

Is there any way of measuring how much happiness is brought about by an action? Do we have any method for comparing the happiness of two different people? If the answer is no, is there a problem for utiliitaritanism?

In order to measure happiness, we could simply be asking a person about how happy they are. But, there is no specific measurement unit to identify how happy a person is. In fact, happiness is subjective to a person, and different things would be making different people happy. For example, some people may get really happy to have ice cream for the first time and for someone, winning a million dollar lottery may also not make them happy, as they might already have billions. Hence, the comparison of happiness is an abstract idea and cannot really be implied in this world. We could just ask a person how happy they are and how much they would want to rate it out of 10, but even that rating would be purely subjective and there will not be any standards for measurement.

No, there’s nothing wrong with utilitarian ethics, as the only thing it asks to be done is helping and making the greatest number of people happy. This means that a person can be responsible for the happiness of another person and it should not be limited to only themselves.