Comments Elsewhere

Daniel,

The use of the terms “utility” and “utilitarianism” in ethical philosophy are a bit different from the use of those terms in modern economics. Here’s how John Stuart Mill defined “utilitarianism” in his book, Utilitarianism:

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure. To give a clear view of the moral standard set up by the theory, much more requires to be said; in particular, what things it includes in the ideas of pain and pleasure; and to what extent this is left an open question. But these supplementary explanations do not affect the theory of life on which this theory of morality is grounded — namely, that pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other scheme) are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain. (Ch. 2 ¶ 2)

“Utility” is typically used by utilitarians to mean “conduciveness to pleasure” or “conduciveness to happiness,” not economic preference-satisfaction, and “utilitarianism” (sometimes “classical utilitarianism”) is broadly used to refer to any theory of ethics that answers all questions of ethical value, either directly or indirectly, in terms of what maximizes total pleasure (or total felt happiness) for everyone. Thus Francis Hutcheson, Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, Henry Sidgwick, etc. are all classical utilitarians; philosophers such as G. E. Moore, who answer all questions of ethical value by reference to effects, but deny either that pleasure is always good as an end, or the only thing good as an end, or both, are consequentialists but not utilitarians. Since classical utilitarianism, unlike consequentialism broadly, entails ethical hedonism, you can refute classical utilitarianism by demonstrating that hedonism is false.