Utility

In this paper I argue that a property realist who seeks to reduce moral normativity to the possession of the property of moral goodness is committed to affirming the self-predicating nature of moral goodness. I use this result to argue that this poses a significant challenge to hedonistic and preferential forms of utilitarianism, as such theories attempt to reduce moral goodness to the properties of maximizing pleasure and maximizing preference fulfillment respectively. And yet neither the property of maximizing pleasure nor the property of maximizing preference fulfillment is necessarily self-predicating. This calls into question the metaphysical propriety of their proposed reductions. Hedonistic1 and preferential2 utilitarian theories of ethics seek to explain moral obligation in terms of the Good, and the Good in terms of the maximization of overall happiness or preferences. This is only to say, it is obligatory to bring about a state of affairs S if and only if the obtaining of S brings it about that there is a greater amount of goodness in the world than there would be if S did not obtain. And the obtaining of S produces such a situation if and only if the obtaining of S causes the greatest amount of 1 1 Examples of modern advocates of hedonistic utilitarianism are legion: Fred Feldman,

Polish Journal of Political Science Vol.1 No.4 of 2016, 2016

Utility is a fundamental notion of orthodox (mostly neoclassical) economics, but as it is an idea, that is very vague and thus impossible to define and measure, it did a lot of harm to economics as a science. Therefore, I strongly argue that this outdated and imprecise concept should be finally abandoned, especially as a basis for microeconomic consumer theory, because it is not only illogical, but also ideologically not neutral, and thus unscientific. For sheer inertia, the concept of utility, as a basis for microeconomic theory, is taught to the students, thus corrupting the young minds. Furthermore, the present financial and economic crisis, the most serious since the 1930s, should force the economists from the academia to seriously revise the foundations of microeconomic theory, and, as logical consequence, rewrite the handbooks in microeconomics. I do not merely argue that the utility theory defies both logic and empirical justification, as many authors did it before me. I argue that the very notion of utility is unscientific, and was kept in microeconomic books only because of sheer inertia, but this way it made a lot of harm to the science of economics, and, as a result to the real economies. I also argue that the subjectivist theory of value should be replaced with an objectivist one, based on value of labour.

2005

The term, utility, is used in two quite different ways in economics. The purpose of this paper is to (1) distinguish the two uses, (2) discuss the history of the two uses, and (3) discuss the relevance of the distinction to applied economics.

Philosophy <html_ent glyph="@amp;" ascii="&"/> Public Affairs, 2000

2006

This paper proposes an explanation for the universal human desire for increasing consumption. It holds that it was moulded in evolutionary times by a mechanism known to biologists as sexual selection, whereby a certain trait - observable consumption - is used by members of one sex to signal their unobservable characteristics valuable to members of the opposite sex. It then goes on to show that the standard economics problem of utility maximisation is formally equivalent to the standard biology problem of the maximisation of individual fitness, the ability to pass genes to future generations.

CTheory, 2015

Capitalism as a system describes a series of relationships generating profits-surplus value-as its underlying goal. The particulars of what it produces do not matter so long as it generates profit. Through this construction human labor becomes both central to the entire system and externalized as an abstraction, a generalized 'labor' that is independent of any particular individual or group, thus allowing "labor cost" to be added up quantitatively over time. Machinery and automation provide a stable complementary to human labor's variable costs, since once paid they become fixed (in being paid they do not need to be constantly paid again the way that human wages do). The relationship between the fixed costs of machinery, the variable costs of labor and the surplus value that emerges through commerce (exchange) is fundamental to the calculation of profit generated in capitalist economics. Businesses that do not generate sufficient surplus values go out of business. The "problem" of profit is simple: as costs imposed by wages increase over time, the rate at which profits accrue declines, revealing a steady decline in surplus value generation. These relationships between value and profit are well known in critiques of capitalist production: pursuit of surplus value is the force that drives capitalist expansions into all aspects of human life and society since the rate of profit described by the equation surplus/(constant capital + variable capital) is always diminishing.[1] Automation, in supplanting human labor, appears to offer a solution to this declining rate of profit through a replacement of the variable costs of human labor with the fixed cost of machinery. By moving towards a complete elision of the variable costs (the wages paid to human labor) from this relationship, the decline can be delayed, inaugurating the cycle where human labor is steadily supplanted by autonomous production, enabling the emergence of digital capitalism. However, this shift is paradigmatic, it challenges the foundational assumptions of capitalism itself while the system undergoes a structural transformation, one as basic as the shift from highly skilled hand labor to steam power and deskilled labor that occurred during the nineteenth-century. Within this system "value" appears an unquestionable, fundamental axiom of production and consumption-so basic to exchange and social relations that its underlying nature appears immutable: Instead of simply representing the relations of commodities, it enters now, so to

KIT Scientific Publishing eBooks, 2021

Differently from scientific contexts utilitarianism continues to be a stumbling-block in many public debates, partly because of misunderstandings, partly because of conflicts with widespread moral convictions. These concern both its axiology and its theory of normativity. On the other hand, there are several context of ethical and public discussion in which characteristic elements of utilitarianism and widely shared normative position come remarkably close, such as the growing recognition of the moral status of nonhuman animals and the recognition of the responsibility for a sustainable use of natural resources. Historically, representatives of utilitarianism had an important share in driving this development. Furthermore, there is a remarkable affinity between utilitarianism and the "principle of responsibility" highlighted, among others, by Hans Jonas. First, there is an affinity between the concept of a prospective responsibility and the utilitarian conception of responsibility as directed at future events and states rather than at future actions and omissions. Another affinity is the utilitarian principle of extending responsibility to all foreseeable consequences instead of, as the theory of double effect has it, restricting responsibility to intended consequences. Finally, utilitarianism is more than its rivals able to satisfy the demands of universalizability implied by the moral nature of prospective responsibility by making the value of subjective well-being its one and only intrinsic value. There does not seem to be any other value on which the same degree of consensus gentium can be expected. I Utilitarianism-Between Academia and the Public Every practice-oriented ethicist knows the gap that from time to time requires an intellectual balancing act between the culture of discussion in the academic world and that of the public sphere: on the one hand a disciplinary expert, on the other a moralist. Many ethical theories discussed objectively and dispassionately in philosophical or economic seminars are met by the public with rejection or outrage, for example, when they conflict with common sense notions of everyday morality or with fundamental political norms.

2016

Her main field of research is virtue ethics, Wittgensteinian ethics and professional ethics, especially with a focus on the relationship between ethics, the good life and welfare as well as practical reason, self-understanding and the role of literature in moral philosophy.

2003

The Economic Journal, 2007

The term ÔutilityÕ can be interpreted in terms of the hedonic experience of an outcome (experienced utility) or in terms of the preference or desire for that outcome (decision utility). It is this second interpretation that lies at the heart of the methods that economists have developed to value nonmarket goods, such as health. In this article, we argue that decision utility is unlikely to generate meaningful data on the utility associated with different experiences, and instead economists should look towards developing measures that focus more directly on experienced utility.