PHL105Y5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Consequentialism, Welfarism, John Stuart Mill
Document Summary
Cannot explain the prescriptive nature of the argument. Hume"s law (you can"t get an ought from an is ) Can"t explain that if an action is moral, then one ought to do it. The premises are all descriptive: good science tells about how humans work, and how they got that way, and how they often behave. Morality is arbitrary is weak: claim is controversial, claim conflicts with other prescriptive facts. Combination of two theories: consequentialism moral action that produces the best overall result, welfarism well-being is the only thing that is intrinsically valuable. Best result is the one that reaps the highest net worth after weighing the good and bad consequences. Consequentialism is incomplete for it doesn"t tell you what is valuable or good or bad. What is valuable: another theory of welfarism, makes distinction between instrumental and intrinsic value. Instrumentally valuable: valuable as a means of getting something else. Intrinsically valuable: valuable for its own sake.
