Being a rational being, I have unknowingly as a kid and knowingly, as an adult, been a utilitarianist. I have believed that I should do that which would maximise happiness. And intuitively indeed, general happiness.
So whenever I face a situation where I must choose between doing something for somebody, I consider - is doing this thing for this person more important for him/her than the alternative thing I would have done instead, is for me? And if yes, is the effort involved worth the happiness I will get by helping this person? If the answer is yes, I must do that something for him/her. This works fine sometimes, and sometimes, it just makes me feel like I am..ugh.. a utilitarian bitch. Well, obviously there are exceptions to this rule, when whims, timidity or qualms come into play.
A utilitarian is always faced with a dilemma, for the problem that he is trying to solve cannot be formulated mathematically. He is trying to optimize the happiness, given the constraints. But formulating the objective is a bit of an issue here. For, how can one know, in advance, which option is going to fetch how much happiness? To make things worse, the definition of happiness is not stable. There's a double practical difficulty in the utilitarian's optimization objective - neither the coefficient matrix, nor the parameters are fixed!
And so, the utilitarian goal cannot be achieved. Firstly, because he does not really know what he wants. And secondly, if his limited and demeaning definition of happiness( in case he thinks he can define happiness in a definite way) will change the moment he achieves it, when he realises that its not what he thought, after all!
The only hope of attaining life's goal then, seems to be in defining the goal correctly. And the utilitarian must give up his definition. As long as his goal remains to optimize an undefined quantity, he will never achieve it, never rest in peace. But then, what should the goal be? What is it that I desire? What is it that I am trying to achieve, if not the maximum happiness? And why am I doing it?
