If doing x brings about y, where y is something unpleasant – meaning x has a negative consequence – then it would seem prudent to avoid doing x. Alternatively, if doing x produces a positive outcome, then common sense would have us do x. However, does engaging in activity x, where x produces a positive outcome, make x the right thing to do, morally? In other words, given its positive consequence, does it necessarily follow that doing x is morally good and so ought to be done? Classical utilitarianism – that is, the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill – holds that for x to be morally good it must engender (actually, or in principle) a positive outcome in the form of increased happiness. Thus, those acts that produce the most happiness are judged to be the most moral. Conversely, an immoral act is said to be that which produces more pain than happiness.

In this chapter I consider the suitability of classical utilitarianism (hereafter, utilitarianism) as a measure of selective prohibition. If engaging in an STA produces an increase in unpleasantness – qua antisocial behaviour, for example – then this fact (if indeed it is a fact) would seem to constitute reasonable grounds for its prohibition.