Modern perspectives on Utilitarianism

Love is the strong affection a person has towards the other person. Love can be between people of different gender, age, colour, social status, religion, or nationality. True love knows no boundaries, and that is why there exist different types of love. Most of the different types of love are derived from ancient Greek. The purpose of the study is to show why different people will have a different kind of love and why each of the love is important to the parties involved. The love between two people can take different forms, and two parties cannot have all the ten types of love discussed. The ten types of love discussed include love for parents, love for friends, agape love, love for animals, intimate love, selfish love, and unenduring love for friends, love for close friends, obsessive love towards people, and child love. Each of the love is unique in its way and is beneficial to both parties involved. The greatest of these types of love is agape love. A good example of agape love was portrayed in the life of Jesus in the Bible. He loved the human race unconditionally and gave all to save them from humanity. Also, child love and parent love are important types of love because they enhance strong bonds between parents and their children. Animal love can be obsessive because it will make a person become too close to animals in caring for them. However, it's an important type of love because it creates a good relationship between human beings and animals. Animals tend to feel protected in the presence of human beings.

This dissertation deals with the problem of cultural rights from the viewpoint of the liberal utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill. It intends to include the author‘s political philosophy in the debates that have been held in recent decades between liberals and communitarians starting from the approach of the philosophical problem of identity. To this end, we try to undo common misconceptions and provide an integrated reading of Mill's philosophy based on careful analysis of his writings, aided by his most eminent interpreters. We attempt to demonstrate that it is based on a previous fundamental adhesion to utilitarianism, as well as from a particular position regarding the access to the truth, that arise the liberal convictions and the centrality of autonomy in his doctrine. Given these premises, we could find that the Millian state, exempting the assumption on the neutrality of public sphere derived from the liberal contractarian doctrine usually professed, reveals itself theoretically compatible with the task of guaranteeing cultural rights. Whilst Mill‘s broad view regarding goods that contribute to happiness is capable of dragging culture into the hedonistic calculus, which affects the measurement of utility over general happiness, his defense of autonomy and diversity seems to justify a special attention to social context which maximize the expression of individuality.

The study of the ethics of war is brimming with cases taken from the realist perspective, where war among states is neither right nor wrong and is viewed outside of morality all together, and relativism perspective, where evaluating an action id done according to the ethical standards of the society within which the action occurs. Revamping the study of war is Mr. William Shaw, who approaches ethics through the lens of utilitarianism, the theory where the best action is the one that maximizes utility when considering all interests equally. Utilitarianism and the Ethics of War walks the reader through the theories of realism and relativism before approaching utilitarianism where the author addresses two main questions: When, if ever, are we morally justified in waging war; and, if recourse to arms is warranted, how are we permitted to fight the wars we wage?

Utylitaryzm miał duży wpływ na scementowanie założeń myśli ekonomicznej-szczególnie w kształtowaniu jej aksjomatycznej podstawy: wyobrażenia natury człowieka-wolnego politycznie i ekonomicznie, racjonalnego i egoistycznego indywidualisty. Produktu europejskiej filozofii i historii: oświecenia, pozytywizmu, utylitaryzmu, Francuskiej Rewolucji czy brytyjskiego empiryzmu i liberalizmu. Przyjęcie koncepcji homo oeconomicus stało się punktem wyjścia do refleksji nad ekonomią dla szkoły klasycznej, neoklasycznej i po dzień dzisiejszy kształ-tuje rozumienie zjawisk ekonomicznych. Klasyczni twórcy utylitaryzmu: Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill i Francis Edgeworth byli uznanymi ekonomistami. Wspomniane założenia, typowe dla cywilizacji Zachodu, legły u podstaw formo-wania postulatów ekonomii politycznej. Zakres ingerencji założeń utylitaryzmu w kształtowanie ekonomii jako nauki nadał kierunek jej rozwojowi, stanowiąc jednocześnie instrument metodologiczno-pojęciowy objaśniający naturę i mecha-nikę zjawisk ekonomicznych. Doktryna utylitarna wniosła do ekonomii pojęcie szczęścia, w nauce tej definiowanego jako użyteczność-przyczynku rewolucji marginalistycznej; uznawana jest za źródło ekonomii dobrobytu i teorii podziału; bezpośrednio kształtowała koncepcje państwa i prawa w ekonomii, rozwinęła teorię handlu międzynarodowego, a jej konsekwencjalizm daje działaniom ekono-micznym bezpośrednie odniesienie do zasad moralności. Wszystko to sprawia, że utylitaryzm jest bardzo przydatnym instrumentem rozumienia i tłumaczenia zjawisk ekonomicznych, szczególnie w obszarze kulturowym, który ją zrodził i w którym się rozwinęła. Pozwala na pełniejsze odczytanie rzeczywistości międzynarodowej w obszarze handlu, finansów czy przepływów czynników produkcji. Słowa kluczowe: utylitaryzm, J.S. Mill, użyteczność, szkoła klasyczna, ekonomia polityczna. Celem artykułu jest próba zbadania wpływu, jaki utylitaryzm, jako doktryna mo-ralna, wywarł na ukształtowanie się postulatów ekonomii klasycznej. Zabieg metodo-logiczny polegający na zastosowaniu utylitaryzmu jako narzędzia badawczego, w nie-śmiałym zamyśle autora, ma stworzyć warunki dla lepszego poznania i zrozumienia niektórych obszarów dawnej i współczesnej ekonomii politycznej. To z kolei pozwoli na uzyskanie pełniejszego obrazu międzynarodowych mechanizmów gospodarczych.

Article reprinted in: Madill, A., & Gough, B. (2016). Qualitative research and its place in psychological science. In A. E. Kazdin (Ed.), Methodological issues and strategies in clinical research (4th ed., pp. 437–458). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/14805-028

In discussing the place of diverse qualitative research within psychological science, the authors highlight the potential permeability of the quantitative-qualitative boundary and identify different ways of increasing communication between researchers specializing in different methods. Explicating diversity within qualitative research is facilitated, initially, through documenting the range of qualitative data collection and analytic methods available. The authors then consider the notion of paradigmatic frame and review debates on the current and future positioning of qualitative research within psychological science. In so doing, the authors argue that the different ways in which the concept of paradigm can be interpreted allow them to challenge the idea that diverse research paradigms are prima facie incommensurate. Further, reviewing the ways in which proponents of qualitative research are seeking to reconfigure the links between paradigms helps the authors to envisage how communication between research communities can be enhanced. This critical review allows the authors to systematize possible configurations for research practice in psychology on a continuum of paradigm integration and to specify associated criteria for judging intermethod coherence.

The article is a plea for ethicists to regard probability as one of their most important concerns. It outlines a series of topics of central importance in ethical theory in which probability is implicated, often in a surprisingly deep way, and lists a number of open problems. Topics covered include: interpretations of probability in ethical contexts; the evaluative and normative significance of risk or uncertainty; uses and abuses of expected utility theory; veils of ignorance; Harsanyi's aggregation theorem; population size problems; equality; fairness; giving priority to the worse off; continuity; incommensurability; nonexpected utility theory; evaluative measurement; aggregation; causal and evidential decision theory; act consequentialism; rule consequentialism; and deontology.

The Dead Sea fault (DSF) is the most impressive tectonic feature in the Middle East. It is a plate boundary, which transfers sea floor spreading in the Red Sea to the Taurus collision zone in Turkey. The DSF has influenced many aspects of this region, including seismicity and ground water availability. It may have even affected the course of human evolution. Numerous geophysical and geological studies of the Dead Sea fault provide insight into its structure and evolution. Crustal structure studies have shown that the crust at the fault zone is slightly thinner than that of the regions west and east of it. A transition zone between the lower crust and the Moho under the fault was mapped. The region has a remarkable paleoseismic record going back to about 70 ka years. Several earthquakes, such as the one that occurred in the Dead Sea region on 31 BC, may have even influenced the course of history of this region. The confusion and fear inflicted by the earthquake paved the way for the expansion of Herod's kingdom. Places such as Jericho, the oldest city in the world, which are located within the valley formed by the fault, were affected immensely by seismic activity. The DSF is an important part of the corridor through which hominids set off out of Africa. Remains of the earliest hominids are found in several sites along the Dead Sea fault, including Erk-el-Ahmar, Ubediya and Gesher Benot Ya'aqov. It is interesting to note that acceleration in the vertical motion along the Dead Sea fault, which produced its present physiography, began slightly before man had started his way out of Africa northwards.

This title might be interpreted by some as either a contradiction-in-terms or just a plain error. After all, the distinction between Immanuel Kant's ethics and utilitarian ethics, such as that proposed by John Stuart Mill, is one between conservatism-basing moral decisions on duty, and consequentialism-basing moral decisions on consequences, respectively. To hold to either one of these methods as opposed to the other may be a decisive factor in one's ethical considerations. However, I plan on justifying the claim that the title impliesthat one has a duty to be mindful of consequences. I'll contend that it's morally wrong, as a rule, to follow Kant's suggested practice of considering consequences as not morally relevant at all. My intention, however, is not to discredit Kant's theory. Rather, my intention is to show that the differences between the two schools of thought aren't as incompatible with one another as supposed-that is, upon reconsideration of what is good-in-itself. I should mention here, too, that neither Kant nor Mill would have agreed on any type of compromise between their respective views. The compromise I'll be proposing is directed, rather, to the acceptance of the majority of humankind who are neither strictly Kantian nor Utilitarian. As such, I suggest that the compromise I offer should be judged as such. Ultimately, I hope to demonstrate that a Kantian framework is more complete when it's understood in terms of utilitarian principles.

Due to human’s inability to reflect beyond its own species, animal ethics is a distorted version of human ethics with provisional “rights” handed down to animals. These fictitious rights do not cover the natural right of privacy, property, health, and protection against human interests, freedom, and especially the right to be. No human has been charged with murder of an animal. Animal’s natural rights have been replaced with and distorted by human rights. Human rights are unnatural projections of lethal power of the human species over the Earth and its inhabitants as humans see fit. Extinctions and ecocides are arguably human rights when ethics is based on human interests and cultural values. Ontologically derived ethics removes this confusion. Humans are animals, and unlike any animal, they consume the biosphere, produce millions of tons of waste, and destroy ecosystems in days, poison, burn, dump, torture animals, overpopulate, and so forth, without regret.

The aim of Paul Hurley's sophisticated monograph is to ground deontological ethics on a second-personal conception of normativity. That conception has been much explored in recent work; the distinctive value of Hurley's book is not the destination, but how he gets there. His central argument is a sustained attack on consequentialism and its claim to be able to model any plausible ethical view from within its own set of assumptions. The consequentialist claims that her act utilitarianism (Hurley critiques this basic form of the view while later demonstrating that his critique generalizes to other forms of consequentialism) is grounded on common sense truisms-such as the claim that it is always right to act for the best.

Parfit advertised the priority view as a new and fundamental theory in the ethics of distribution. He never discusses risk, and many writers follow suit when discussing the priority view. This article formalizes two popular arguments for a commonly accepted risk-free definition of the priority view. One is based on a direct attempt to define the priority view, the other is based on a contrast with utilitarianism and egalitarianism. But neither argument succeeds, and more generally, it is not possible to make sense of the priority view in a risk-free framework. The article pays particular attention to the proper role of evaluative measurements in theorizing about the ethics of distribution. Despite appearances, approaching the priority view in terms of risk from the outset is argued to be quite natural.

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.

Happiness is political. The way we think about happiness affects what we do, how we relate to other people and the world around us, our moral principles, and even our ideas about how society should be organized. Utilitarianism, a political theory based on hedonistic and individualistic ideas of happiness, has been dominated for more than two-hundred years by its founder, Jeremy Bentham. In Happiness, Democracy, and the Cooperative Movement, Mark J. Kaswan examines the work of William Thompson, a friend of Bentham’s who nonetheless offers a very different utilitarian philosophy and political theory based on a different conception of happiness, but whose work has been largely overlooked. Kaswan reveals the importance of our ideas about happiness for our understanding of the basic principles and nature of democracy, its role in society and its character as a social institution. In what is the closest examination of Thompson’s political theory to date, Kaswan moves from philosophy to theory to practice, starting with conceptions of happiness before moving to theories of utility, then to democratic theory, and finally to practice in the first detailed account of how Thompson’s ideas laid the foundations for the cooperative movement, which is now the world’s largest democratic social movement.

“This is an original and impressive piece of scholarship that calls attention to an important but neglected figure (Thompson) and provides an innovative and timely reading of his work. In the author’s hands, applied theory is given new life and new purpose.” — Stephen Engelmann, editor of Selected Writings: Jeremy Bentham

“In this remarkable book, Mark Kaswan rescues and rehabilitates the reputation of a long-forgotten and unjustly neglected thinker—the radical Irishman, feminist, non-Benthamite Utilitarian, and a writer of remarkable range and power—William Thompson. In Kaswan, Thompson has finally found the expositor he so richly deserves. And we might in turn find in Thompson a vision of democratic possibilities that we so sorely need.” — Terence Ball, author of Reappraising Political Theory: Revisionist Studies in the History of Political Thought

In her book Uneasy Virtue, Julia Driver presents an account of motive or trait utilitarianism, one that has been taken as “the most detailed and thoroughly defended recent formulation” of consequential virtue ethics. On Driver's account character traits are morally virtuous if and only if they generally lead to good consequences for society. Various commentators have taken Driver to task over this account of virtue, which she terms “pure evaluational externalism.” They object that, on Driver's account of virtue, it could turn out that traits traditionally understood as pernicious are actually virtuous. While many writers have speculated about the forms new ‘virtues’ might take in a hypothetical world, I will argue that at least one trait that is seemingly pernicious but would have to be counted as virtuous by Driver already exists.

Talk delivered at the 'Philosophy, Politics, and Law' workshop, 29 November 2014, University College Dublin, Ireland

The paper deals with the question if utilitarianism as presented by Robert Goodin can serve as a normative theory for political acts. To do this, a general definition of utilitarianism in its classic form, act-utilitarianism, is provided which shows that utilitarianism in its classic sense focusses on the moral quality of the actions of individuals in the private sphere. Since politics happens in the public sphere, the paper develops a version of utilitarianism which does not focus on the individual, but which is able to take into account public acts. To facilitate this endeavour, other, non-classical, versions of the theory will be used in addition to act-utilitarianism: rule-utilitarianism and preference-based utilitarianism. It shall be examined how Goodin uses those three different strands of one and the same theory to try to establish utilitarianism as a normative guideline for public and political acts. Furthermore, it shall be assessed if he reaches his goal and how well he reaches it (if he does).