SOC205H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Deterrence Theory, Rational Agent, Proletarianization
Document Summary
He was not so popular or influential. He was the founder of utilitarianism which believed in utility maximization as the goal. Everyone wants to maximize their pleasure and utility (anything we find good in life and minimize the bad things). He also had these ideas about deterrence theory and refined them. The governments job is to also allow us to maximize our utility as well. Trolly problem: train splits into two and one track theres one person and the other there five people. The train is heading for the five people, you can switch it to kill the one person. If you can accomplish the same end with less suffering or with less cost, you should do it; the best philosophy is the one that maximizes utility. You want to minimize how many negative utilities you have so therefore less punishments towards people.
