PHIL 111 Lecture Notes - Cookie Monster, Kantianism, Consequentialism
27 Feb 2014
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Recall the core idea behind divine command ethics. That idea was probably familiar to you, even if the more fully articulated version that we studied was not. A simplistic rendering of the core idea behind utilitarianism would be to say that things are good just in case they have good consequences. This is a widespread belief, which explains why there are so many versions of utilitarianism in the history of philosophy. The theory of utilitarianism was first fully articulated in the 19th century but pre-cursors go back to antiquity: http://plato. stanford. edu/entries/utilitarianism-history/ We shall study mill"s version of the theory. To understand mill"s version of the theory, one must understand these four matters: the basis of rightness and wrongness, the concept of happiness, the set of agents whose happiness is in question, the actual argument for utilitarianism. Suppose you have two options- spend twenty bucks on a movie, or spend it buying meals for the poor.
