The Problem of Making Interpersonal Comparisons

The Problem of Making Interpersonal Comparisons

One of the problems with utilitarianism is that it is impossible to make interpersonal comparisons. Different people have different personalities and talents which give them to raise their different goals and ambitions. All of these variations are became humans’ existence goals. However, the problem is that we can not know or measure the exactly pleasure and pain for any specific person in any particular situation. Actually, Bentham already recognized this problem; also some economists have given up using this theory for a long time ago. However, it is so strange that welfare economists continue to use this theory to measure utility. The prominence of welfare analysis has given utilitarianism a standing in modern policy debates, but such efforts still can not escape the reality that such measures can not be made. Without an adequate way to measure utility for interpersonal comparisons, all such policy arguments are reduced to contests where each side claims that rewards to be received by them would greatly outweigh whatever pain might be incurred by those who are forced to bear the costs.

An Inadequate Conception of Human Nature

On the other hand, Professor Cleveland states that the second problem with utilitarianism is that it has a very narrow conception of what it means to be a human being. Within Bentham’s theory which mentions human beings are considered to be passive creatures who respond to the environment in purely mechanical fashion. No person is responsible for his or her own behavior which means human action is the same as that of a machine in operation. All human reason is reduced to the point of being meaningless because there is no meaning to human thought or human action. After this problem was figured out, it is so doubt to say all human being is seeking pleasure and avoiding pain which we learn from the ethical theory.

Edmund Opitz also point out that pleasure can not be the goal of human being’s action. It is just a byproduct which is actually aimed at the attainment of some specific goal or end. Individuals always do not consider such qualitative issues until they are well having what they need, but it does not mean that those issues are not important. The great proponent of utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill, recognizes that happiness could not be directly or tried to introduce