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Preference utilitarianism (also known as preferentialism) is a form of utilitarianism in contemporary philosophy. [1] Unlike value monist forms of utilitarianism, preferentialism values actions that fulfill the most personal interests for the entire circle of people affected by said action.
Unlike classical utilitarianism, in which right actions are defined as those that maximize pleasure and minimize pain, preference utilitarianism entails promoting actions that fulfil the interests (i.e., preferences) of those beings involved. [2] Here beings might be rational, that is to say, that their interests have been carefully selected and they have not made some kind of error. However, 'beings' can also be extended to all sentient beings, even those who lack the capacity to contemplate long-term interests and consequences. [3] Since what is good and right depends solely on individual preferences, there can be nothing that is in itself good or bad: for preference utilitarians, the source of both morality and ethics in general is subjective preference. [3] Preference utilitarianism therefore can be distinguished by its acknowledgement that every person's experience of satisfaction is unique.
The theory, as outlined by R. M. Hare in 1981, [4] is controversial, insofar as it presupposes some basis by which a conflict between A's preferences and B's preferences can be resolved (for example, by weighting them mathematically). [5] In a similar vein, Peter Singer, for much of his career a major proponent of preference utilitarianism and himself influenced by the views of Hare, has been criticised for giving priority to the views of beings capable of holding preferences (being able actively to contemplate the future and its interaction with the present) over those solely concerned with their immediate situation, a group that includes animals and young children. There are, he writes in regard to killing in general, times when "the preference of the victim could sometimes be outweighed by the preferences of others". Singer does, however, still place a high value on the life of rational beings, since killing them does not infringe upon just one of their preferences, but "a wide range of the most central and significant preferences a being can have". [6]
Applied ethics is the practical aspect of moral considerations. It is ethics with respect to real-world actions and their moral considerations in private and public life, the professions, health, technology, law, and leadership. For example, bioethics is concerned with identifying the best approach to moral issues in the life sciences, such as euthanasia, the allocation of scarce health resources, or the use of human embryos in research. Environmental ethics is concerned with ecological issues such as the responsibility of government and corporations to clean up pollution. Business ethics includes the duties of whistleblowers to the public and to their employers.
In moral philosophy, consequentialism is a class of normative, teleological ethical theories that holds that the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for judgement about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct. Thus, from a consequentialist standpoint, a morally right act is one that will produce a good outcome. Consequentialism, along with eudaimonism, falls under the broader category of teleological ethics, a group of views which claim that the moral value of any act consists in its tendency to produce things of intrinsic value. Consequentialists hold in general that an act is right if and only if the act will produce, will probably produce, or is intended to produce, a greater balance of good over evil than any available alternative. Different consequentialist theories differ in how they define moral goods, with chief candidates including pleasure, the absence of pain, the satisfaction of one's preferences, and broader notions of the "general good".
In ethical philosophy, ethical egoism is the normative position that moral agents ought to act in their own self-interest. It differs from psychological egoism, which claims that people can only act in their self-interest. Ethical egoism also differs from rational egoism, which holds that it is rational to act in one's self-interest. Ethical egoism holds, therefore, that actions whose consequences will benefit the doer are ethical.
Ethics is the philosophical study of moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches include normative ethics, applied ethics, and metaethics.
Normative ethics is the study of ethical behaviour and is the branch of philosophical ethics that investigates questions regarding how one ought to act, in a moral sense.
In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for the affected individuals. In other words, utilitarian ideas encourage actions that lead to the greatest good for the greatest number. Although different varieties of utilitarianism admit different characterizations, the basic idea behind all of them is, in some sense, to maximize utility, which is often defined in terms of well-being or related concepts. For instance, Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, described utility as the capacity of actions or objects to produce benefits, such as pleasure, happiness, and good, or to prevent harm, such as pain and unhappiness, to those affected.
Value theory is the systematic study of values. Also called axiology, it examines the nature, sources, and types of values. As a branch of philosophy, it has interdisciplinary applications in fields such as economics, sociology, anthropology, and psychology.
In environmental philosophy, environmental ethics is an established field of practical philosophy "which reconstructs the essential types of argumentation that can be made for protecting natural entities and the sustainable use of natural resources." The main competing paradigms are anthropocentrism, physiocentrism, and theocentrism. Environmental ethics exerts influence on a large range of disciplines including environmental law, environmental sociology, ecotheology, ecological economics, ecology and environmental geography.
Richard Mervyn Hare, usually cited as R. M. Hare, was an English moral philosopher who held the post of White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford from 1966 until 1983. He subsequently taught for a number of years at the University of Florida. His meta-ethical theories were influential during the second half of the twentieth century.
In moral philosophy, deontological ethics or deontology is the normative ethical theory that the morality of an action should be based on whether that action itself is right or wrong under a series of rules and principles, rather than based on the consequences of the action. It is sometimes described as duty-, obligation-, or rule-based ethics. Deontological ethics is commonly contrasted to consequentialism, utilitarianism, virtue ethics, and pragmatic ethics. In this terminology, action is more important than the consequences.
John Mitchell Finnis is an Australian legal philosopher and jurist specializing in jurisprudence and the philosophy of law. He is an original interpreter of Aristotle and Aquinas, and counts Germain Grisez as a major influence and collaborator. He has made contributions to epistemology, metaphysics, and moral philosophy.
Rational egoism is the principle that an action is rational if and only if it maximizes one's self-interest. As such, it is considered a normative form of egoism, though historically has been associated with both positive and normative forms. In its strong form, rational egoism holds that to not pursue one's own interest is unequivocally irrational. Its weaker form, however, holds that while it is rational to pursue self-interest, failing to pursue self-interest is not always irrational.
Secular ethics is a branch of moral philosophy in which ethics is based solely on human faculties such as logic, empathy, reason or moral intuition, and not derived from belief in supernatural revelation or guidance—a source of ethics in many religions. Secular ethics refers to any ethical system that does not draw on the supernatural, and includes humanism, secularism and freethinking. A classical example of literature on secular ethics is the Kural text, authored by the ancient Indian philosopher Valluvar.
Kantian ethics refers to a deontological ethical theory developed by German philosopher Immanuel Kant that is based on the notion that "I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law." It is also associated with the idea that "it is impossible to think of anything at all in the world, or indeed even beyond it, that could be considered good without limitation except a good will." The theory was developed in the context of Enlightenment rationalism. It states that an action can only be moral if it is motivated by a sense of duty, and its maxim may be rationally willed a universal, objective law.
Moral particularism is a theory in normative ethics that runs counter to the idea that moral actions can be determined by applying universal moral principles. It states that there is no set of moral principles that can be applied to every situation, making it an idea appealing to the causal nature of morally challenging situations. Moral judgements are said to be determined by factors of relevance with the consideration of a particular context. A moral particularist, for example, would argue that homicide cannot be judged to be morally wrong until all the morally relevant facts are known. While this stands in stark contrast to other prominent moral theories, such as deontology, consequentialism, and virtue ethics, it finds its way into jurisprudence, with the idea of justifiable homicide, for instance. In this case, the morally relevant facts are based on context rather than principle. Critics would argue that even in this case, the principle still informs morally right action.
Prioritarianism, or the priority view, is a perspective within ethics and political philosophy stating that "social welfare orderings should give explicit priority to the worse off". Prioritarianism resembles utilitarianism, and is likewise a form of aggregative consequentialism.
The Methods of Ethics is a book on ethics first published in 1874 by the English philosopher Henry Sidgwick. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy indicates that The Methods of Ethics "in many ways marked the culmination of the classical utilitarian tradition." Noted moral and political philosopher John Rawls, writing in the Forward to the Hackett reprint of the 7th edition, says Methods of Ethics "is the clearest and most accessible formulation of ... 'the classical utilitarian doctrine'". Contemporary utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer has said that the Methods "is simply the best book on ethics ever written."
Negative utilitarianism is a form of negative consequentialism that can be described as the view that people should minimize the total amount of aggregate suffering, or that they should minimize suffering and then, secondarily, maximize the total amount of happiness. It can be considered as a version of utilitarianism that gives greater priority to reducing suffering than to increasing pleasure. This differs from classical utilitarianism, which does not claim that reducing suffering is intrinsically more important than increasing happiness. Both versions of utilitarianism hold that morally right and morally wrong actions depend solely on the consequences for overall aggregate well-being. "Well-being" refers to the state of the individual.
Gary Edward Varner was an American philosopher specializing in environmental ethics, philosophical questions related to animal rights and animal welfare, and R. M. Hare's two-level utilitarianism. At the time of his death, he was an emeritus professor in the department of philosophy at Texas A&M University; he had been based at the university since 1990. He was educated at Arizona State University, the University of Georgia, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison; at Madison, where he was supervised by Jon Morline, he wrote one of the first doctoral theses on environmental ethics. Varner's first monograph was In Nature's Interests?, which was published by Oxford University Press in 1998. In the book, Varner defended a form of biocentric individualism, according to which all living entities have morally considerable interests.
