From cardinal to ordinal utility theory: Darwin and differential capacity for happiness

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, July, 2005 by Sandra J. Peart, David M. Levy

I

Lionel Robbins Remembers

JUST SIX YEARS AFTER his Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science created a stir in economics with its query about the scientific status of interpersonal utility comparisons (Robbins [19321 1935: 136-140), Lionel Robbins remembered how he came to be a "provisional" utilitarian:

   My own attitude to problems of political action has always been
   one of what I might call provisional utilitarianism.... I have
   always felt that, as a first approximation in handling questions
   relating to the lives and actions of large masses of people, the
   approach which counts each man as one, and, on that assumption,
   asks which way lies the greatest happiness, is less likely to lead
   one astray than any of the absolute systems. I do not believe, and
   I never have believed, that in fact men are necessarily equal or
   should always be judged as such. But I do believe that, in most
   cases, political calculations which do not treat them as if they
   were equal are morally revolting. (1938: 635)

A. C. Pigou's utilitarian analysis, involving "the delicate balancing of gain and loss," was attractive: (1)

   It follows, therefore, that when I came to the study of economics,
   I had the strongest bias in favour of a utilitarian analysis. The
   delicate balancing of gain and loss through intricate repercussions
   of policy which I found in such works as the Economics of Welfare,
   fascinated me; and I was powerfully attracted by the proposition,
   urged so forcefully by Edwin Cannan and others, that recent
   developments of the theory of value could be invoked to demonstrate
   the desirability of the mitigation of inequality. When I look back
   on that frame of mind, I find it easy to understand the belief of
   Bentham and his followers that they had found the open sesame to
   problems of social policy. (1938: 635-636)

Then doubts set in about the feasibility of such a utilitarian calculus:

   But I began to feel that there were profound difficulties in a
   complete fusion between what Edgeworth called the economic and
   the hedonistic calculus. I am not clear how these doubts first
   suggested themselves; but I well remember how they were brought
   to a head by my reading somewhere--I think in the works of Sir
   Henry Maine--the story of how an Indian official had attempted
   to explain to a high-caste Brahmin the sanctions of the
   Benthamite system. "But that," said the Brahmin, "cannot
   possibly be right. I am ten times as capable of happiness as
   that untouchable over there." I had no sympathy with the Brahmin.
   But I could not escape the conviction that, if I chose to regard
   men as equally capable of satisfaction and he to regard them as
   differing according to a hierarchical schedule, the difference
   between us was not one which could be resolved by the same
   methods of demonstration as were available in other fields
   of social judgment. (1938: 636) (2)

In this essay, we provide the context for Robbins's memory of the debate over the transition from cardinal to ordinal utility. In so doing, we link the debate to the transition from egalitarianism to hierarchy that has been the overarching theme of our book (Peart-Levy 2005a), and to post-Darwinian accounts of variations in the capacity for happiness. We begin by considering the egalitarian utilitarianism of J. S. Mill and Herbert Spencer, in which everyone was supposed to count as one. That is their phrase. Second, we compare Spencer's utilitarian goal with Darwin's goal of the "general good." Here, we suggest that Spencer's goal was egalitarian, while Darwin's entailed biological perfection or hierarchy. We then follow Robbins's suggestion and consider Edgeworth's hedonic calculus in which the notion of hierarchy enters economics. For Edgeworth, agents have differential capacities for happiness. That is his phrase, and he tells us that it came to him through Darwin. Throughout, we consider normative aspects of Darwin's work, in particular Darwin's open and sustained challenge to the early utilitarianism of Mill and Spencer. (3)

Darwin's alternative to the greatest happiness, the "general good," distinguished the happiness of individuals from their perfection. Post-Darwin, individuals might plausibly be able to judge their happiness, but they are presumed to be less able to judge (still less to effect) their perfection. (4) Supposing the scientist, by contrast, is able to evaluate such perfection as well as how to achieve it, the general good provides the means to judge social states. Such a notion of general good makes it clear that Darwin's conception of natural selection was normative: (5) a social state with more perfect people would be judged superior to one with less. (6)

The contrast between the early utilitarianism of Mill and Spencer and the post-Darwinian pursuit of the general good especially comes into play when we consider what to do with imperfect people. Should the less than perfect be replaced by more perfect people, or do they-as in Spencer's account--count equally with all others? This question was central to F. Y. Edgeworth's fusion of utilitarianism with biology. Edgeworth held that biological fitness mapped to the capacity for pleasure: as people were biologically superior, they possessed a greater capacity for pleasure. He considered the extreme case of agents with such low capacity for pleasure that they have zero or negative total happiness. Their pleasure from consuming goods is offset totally, perhaps more than offset, by their pain at producing goods. This case is central to Edgeworth's eugenic proposals for racial betterment. If such low-pleasure-capacity people were replaced by people with a greater capacity for pleasure, social utility would increase. While no one at the time suggested that actual people be replaced, there was considerable public discussion of proposals to give people greater or less discretion over the decision to reproduce. (7)