From Consequentialism to Utilitarianism

Suppose that a social behaviour norm specifies ethical decisions at all decision nodes of every finite decision tree whose terminal nodes have consequences in a given domain. Suppose too that behaviour is both consistent in subtrees and continuous as probabilities vary. Suppose that the social consequence domain consists of profiles of individual consequences defined broadly enough so that only individuals' random consequences should matter, and not the structure of any decision tree. Finally, suppose that each individual has a "welfare behaviour norm" coinciding with the social norm for decision trees where only that individual's random consequences are affected by any decision. Then, after suitable normalizations, the social norm must maximize the expected value of a sum of individual welfare functions over the feasible set of random consequences. Moreover, individuals who never exist can be accorded a zero welfare level provided that any decision is acceptable on their behalf. These arguments lead to a social objective whose structural form is that of classical utilitarianism, even though individual welfare should probably be interpreted very differently from classical utility.

Economics and Philosophy 24(1) (2008): 1–33, 2008

A natural formalization of the priority view is presented which results from adding expected utility theory to the main ideas of the priority view. The result is ex post prioritarianism. But ex post prioritarianism entails that in a world containing just one person, it is sometimes better for that person to do what is strictly worse for herself. This claim may appear to be implausible. But the deepest objection to ex post prioritarianism has to do with meaning: ex post prioritarianism is not a genuine alternative to utilitarianism in the first place. By contrast, ex ante prioritarianism is defensible. But its motivation is very different from the usual rationales offered for the priority view. Given their hostility to egalitarianism, most supporters of the priority view have not provided reasons to reject utilitarianism.

Economics and Philosophy 22(3) (2006): 335–63, 2006

Utilitarianism and prioritarianism make a strong assumption about the uniqueness of measures of how good things are for people, or for short, individual goodness measures. But it is far from obvious that the presupposition is correct. The usual response to this problem assumes that individual goodness measures are determined independently of our discourse about distributive theories. This article suggests reversing this response. What determines the set of individual goodness measures just is the body of platitudes we accept about distributive theories. When prioritarianism is taken to have an ex ante form, this approach vindicates the utilitarian and prioritarian presupposition, and provides an answer to an argument due to Broome that for different reasons to do with measurement, prioritarianism is meaningless.

Journal of Applied Philosophy, 2018

Philip Pettit has been one of the pioneering figures in the contemporary development of consequentialism toward an approach to ethical theory more adequate to our understanding of ourselves and of our lives together. He has shown how consequentialism has resources for contending with many of the most serious criticisms that have been levelled against it. Two fundamental elements of this development make an appearance in ‘Three Mistakes’. The first element is broadening the base of intrinsic goods in terms of which consequentialism makes its fundamental evaluations of acts and outcomes. At the outset of ‘Three Mistakes’, Pettit urges that consequentialists should go beyond the hedonic concerns of Benthamite utilitarianism to include among fundamental intrinsic goods friendship, promise-keeping, truth-telling, and the kind of respect for others shown when we impose upon ourselves limits on how we are willing to treat them. So sensible is this recommendation, that pluralism about intri...

Social Choice and Welfare, 1995

Ethics can be divided into a theory of prudential values and a theory of morality in a narrower sense. My paper proposes a utilitarian -a rule-utilitariantheory of morality. But it deviates from most of the utilitarian tradition by rejecting the hedonistic and subjectivistic accounts of prudential values favored by many utilitarian writers. While economists tend to define people's utility levels in terms of their actual preferences, ethics must define them in terms of their informed preferences. To prefer A over B does not mean to have a stronger desire for A than for B. Rather, it means to regard one's access to A as being more important than one's access to B. Even though different people often have quite different preferences, their basic desires seem to be much the same. We must choose our moral rules, and our society's moral code as a whole, by their social utility. An important factor in determining their social utility are their expectation effects. Unlike the rule -utilitarian more code, the act -utilitarian moral code would be unable to give proper weight to these expectation effects. It would also unduly restrict our individual freedom. Finally, I shall argue against Kant that morality is primarily a servant of many other human values rather than itself the highest value of human life.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

Harsanyi invested his Aggregation Theorem and Impartial Observer Theorem with deep utilitarian sense, but Sen redescribed them as "representation theorems" with little ethical import. This negative view has gained wide acquiescence in economics. Against it, we support the utilitarian interpretation by a novel argument relative to the Aggregation Theorem. We suppose that a utilitarian observer evaluates non-risky alternatives by the sum of individual utilities and investigate his von Neumann-Morgenstern (VNM) preference on risky alternatives. Adding some technical assumptions to Harsanyi's, we conclude that (i) this observer would use the utility sum as a VNM utility function, and crucially, (ii) any social observer would evaluate both risky and non-risky alternatives in terms of a weighted utility sum.

John Rawls' theory of "justice as fairness" aimed at presenting a superior alternative to utilitarianism. To do so, he argued that, from behind the veil of ignorance, the representatives in the original position would choose the principles of justice as fairness and would reject utilitarianism. Rawls' criticism was targeted to the classical version of utilitarianism, which places utility at the level of the individual and as some measure of happiness or wellbeing. In this paper, I attempt to introduce David Hume's concept of justice as a utilitarian theory that, first, is fundamentally different to the classical version, and two, escapes the criticism of Rawls, at least in terms of the latter's rejection of utilitarianism. I will do this by first showing that Hume's concept of utility, as opposed to Bentham's, is a means and not an end, and a means to the public interest. Then, I will argue that the public interest is for Hume an emergent property of the social order that results from the interactions of human beings, just like some properties of complex biological and physical systems arise from the interactions of its members. Next, I will show that Hume's theory is utilitarian because it rests on an argument including a contingent claim based on the consequences of human decisions: a social order can exist only if individuals cooperate under the strict observance of the three fundamental laws of justice. Finally, I will show that Rawls' criticism does not apply to Hume's theory.

2008

In his metaethics and philosophy of language, Jeremy Bentham was strongly influenced by John Locke's empiricist framework. In his works on logic and mind (but also in his ethical writings), John Stuart Mill displayed a blend of empiricism and common sense philosophy, which he inherited from his father James. In addition to this, both Bentham and Mill viewed ethics and politics as empirical disciplines, based on human experience, and modeled after empirical, inexact disciplines, such as medicine. Despite his intuitionist leanings, even Henry Sidgwick presented his moral epistemology as a correction of an originally empiricist framework. Moreover, in Sidgwick's argument for utilitarianism, a lot of room is left to the power that a utilitarian ethical theory has in accounting for our common moral experience, embodied in our common sense moral judgements. Even through the twentieth century, utilitarianism has kept its connection with human experience, if only because of its frequent and numerous incursions in detailed applicative problems. Possibly, utilitarian ethical thinkers were the first to realize a turn to applied ethical theory. Paradoxically, the often repeated and most well-known objection to utilitarianism, namely its alleged counter-intuitiveness, concerns the relationship between utilitarian ethics and experience. This aspect of utilitarian moral theories was placed at the center of the three-day Conference "Utilitarianism: An Ethic of Experience?" (held at the University of Rome, June 12-14, 2007), where the papers published here were originally presented and discussed. From the many presentations, discussions, and informal talks that happened in those three days in Rome, it turned out that the question mark at the end of the conference title, originally indicating the ironic, yet provocative and wary spirit the organizers had toward the subject, could be removed safely. Experience is at the centre of utilitarianism, both in its historical and contemporary versions. Experience, however, is only a common point of departure, and it is not able to settle the various puzzles that scholars interested in utilitarianism must face. It is also for this reason that the title of the present collection was changed to a more neutral one, aiming to show the two directions assumed by the contemporary scholarship: an increasing penetration into the historical texts of eighteenth and nineteenth century utilitarians and a more detailed refinement of utilitarian ethical theories to respond classical and new objections and problems.

International Journal of Philosophy

Classical utilitarianism is very demanding and entails some counter-intuitive implications in moral dilemmas such as the trolley problem in deontological ethics and the repugnant conclusion in population ethics. This article presents how one specific modification of utilitarianism can avoid these counter-intuitive implications. In this modified utilitarian theory, called 'discounted' or 'mild' utilitarianism, people have a right to discount the utilities of others, under the condition that people whose utility is discounted cannot validly complain against such discounting. A complaint made by a utility discounted person is not valid if either the existence of the discounting people in that option is in a specific sense necessary or the existence of the discounted person is in a sense not necessary. According to mild utilitarianism, we should choose the option that maximizes the total validly discounted or complaint-free discounted utility, i e. the sum of everyone's utility minus the complaint-free discounts. As there are two conditions that make a complaint invalid, this right to discount can be translated into two versions: the right to bodily autonomy and the right to procreation autonomy. The former right relates to the mere means principle in deontological ethics, the latter right is useful in avoiding the repugnant conclusion problem in population ethics. The possibility of democratically imposing an upper bound on the permissible amount of discounting is discussed.

This is the essay that I wrote for my Introduction to Ethics course in my first year of university. The introduction reads as follows: John Stuart Mill famously summarised utilitarianism as “the greatest good for the greatest number.” The theory identifies human happiness as the goal of any action and aims to provide a moral metric that quantifies outcomes on a scale of utility. In this essay, I will formalise and explain positive act utilitarianism, as made by Bentham. Secondly, I will analyse prominent objections pertaining to justice, workability and demandingness. These sections conclude that utilitarianism contravenes justice at great cost to minority interests, is practically unworkable and requires supererogation. Rule utilitarianism is then evaluated as a possible solution to the aforementioned concerns. Ultimately, I will conclude that rule utilitarianism does not escape the refutations of act utilitarianism because it either dissolves into act, or is forced to abandon the principle of utility altogether. This essay will be divided into five distinct sections: 1. The Utilitarian Argument 2. Justice and Minority Rights 3. Workability 4. Demandingness 5. Rule Utilitarianism: a possible solution?