Happiness & Public Policy

Is there a problem in comparing one person’s utility to another’s?

Well, it depends on what you mean by utility, of course. If, as on the formal theory, utility is just a way of representating an ordinal ordering of preferences, and preferences are propositional attitudes only contingently related to qualitiative states of consciousness, then there’s a problem, sort of, in the sense that quantitative comparison doesn’t make any sense. It’s just ruled out by definition. (How it is that you do welfare economics anyway has been one of the main preoccupations of the modern economics profession.)

Now, if utility is a certain kind of feeling of pleasure, then interpersonal utility comparisons are no more problematic than intrapersonal utility comparisons. I feel better now that I did when I woke up. It’s a fact! And I can feel better than someone else does, obviously. If Bob is enjoying a massage, and Al is taking his CPA exam, then Bob is likely racking up more utility, in the substantive psychological sense of utility.

The tricky question has to do with the value of utility, in this sense of utility. If you’re a Benthamite, then utility just is value. But unless one’s moral sense has been corrupted, it is easy to see that Benthamism is false. The value of lots and lots things obviously swings quite free of utility-as-pleasure. So if we ask, “Whose mental state realizes more value, Bob’s or Al’s?,” it is not easy to say. It may not be possible to say. The fact that Bob is experiencing more utility is informative only if we know how valuable utility is. Perhaps Al, while he finds the CPA exam arduous and boring, also finds that he is well-prepared, and the test, although not at all pleasurable, is the occasion for the experience of competence and self-efficacy. Arguably, the experience of competence and self-efficacy is more valuable than the warm, transient pleasure of a good massage.

(Some of you will be tempted to confuse the fact Al is feeling something that is good [self-efficacy] with the idea that he feels good. Don’t do that. Imagine a different example where the performance of competence is physically and mentally excruciating. Maybe a great warrior in a struggle to the death with a fierce opponent. Titus Pullo in the arena against the gladiators in the latest episode of Rome, say. Gravely wounded, and at the brink of exhaustion, Pullo simply doesn’t “feel good,” if you’re speaking English [or Latin]. Nevertheless, there may be value in his experience of competence as a fighter.)

Of course, we should avoid talk of the plain old valuable and ask, “valuable to whom, for what?” Different people have different life plans, and different life plans have different requirements. As Aristotle noted, food is good for everyone, but how much food is good depends on what you’re up to. Milo the wrestler needs more food than the rest of us, owing to his vocation. Likewise, the value of utility-as-pleasure depends on our projects and goals.

For example, take this bit of a USA Today story about performance artist Criss Angel:

In the premiere, he lit himself on fire. This week, Angel flies suspended from a helicopter, hanging with four 8-gauge fish hooks stuck into his back. “You have to put them in the flesh just right. Too shallow and they will rip right out, too deep can be permanent muscle damage. It was excruciatingly painful, yet one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever done.”

And I take it that Angel sees some of the beauty of it–some of the value of it–in the fact that it was excruciatingly painful. Same with David Blaine starving himself, or freezing himself in a block of ice. The pain is essential to the art. It could even be that Criss Angel dies with more dolors than hedons in the bank, due to the exquisite pain involved in his macabre calling, yet passes into the afterlife considering his life a brilliant, beautiful success.

So how does the value of Criss Angel’s excruciating pain compare with the value of somebody else’s pain? That’s the question that doesn’t make any sense. A lifeplan-relative theory of value makes the interpersonal comparison of the value of utility-as-pleasure impossible, since pleasure and pain doesn’t play the same role in everyone’s life plan, even if it is possible to compare who is having more or less pleasure or pain. We have not found the science, and we won’t.

Asians reliably report lower “happiness” on surveys than do Westerners, even after controlling for wealth and institutions. Are their lives worse? Is there something the matter with them? No. The value they place on whatever it is that happiness surveys track may just be different. The may be doing just as well relative to their lifeplans as we are, and maybe even better.