Philosophy 2700F/G Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Consequentialism, Deontological Ethics, Botany
17 May 2018
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Week 6: February 13th, Tuesday
More Questions:
1. Is utilitarianism too demanding? (Ch II, 19)
Epistemic, cognitive and time constraints
Asks to avoid human biases
Uncompensated sacrifices: putting others above yourself and your family
2. Is there tie, previous to action, for calculating and weighing the effects of any one line of
odut o the geeral happiess Ch II,
No. But this is unproblematic. The promotion of aggregate happiness is best achieved by
respetig the rules of orality for the ultitude for these represet positie eliefs as to
the effets of soe atios o aggregate happiess Ch II,
The rules of orality a e thought of as common-sense morality
Whe aspets of these oral rules aps oe ito oflit, the e appeal to the principle of
utility itself destiatio. The use of these aps to reah the destiatio is a for of indirect
utilitarianism (a.k.a. two-level utilitarianism).
Another Argument for Utilitarianism:
- Mill might use another argument to convince us of utilitarianism
- He things that the system in ethics is necessary and desirable
- In his monumental work, The System of Logic, he claims that:
there ust e soe stadard y hih to deterie the goodess or adess, asolute ad
comparative, of ends, or objects of desire. And whatever that standard is, there can be but one:
for if there were several ultimate principles of conduct, the same conduct might be approved by
one of those principles and condemned by another; and there would be needed some more
geeral priiple, as upire etee the “L VIII 9
*“o e a use these aps to get to the destiatio, ut e a also use arious
systems to improve and modify the maps if there are conflicts – this would make the
overall view of utilitarianism attractive
- It is best to have a unified moral doctrine that adjudicates conflicts between different secondary
principles – e.g. between the principle forbidding lying and the principle obligating us to protect
others from harm
- Utilitarianism provides this (Ch II, 25)
- Hence, it is superior to other theories that do not supply this sort of systematization
Week 6: February 15th, Thursday
Well known objection to utilitarianism and the broader idea of consequentialism, is Integrity.
Utilitarianism says that all and only actions that maximize surplus happiness for the aggregate are right.
Consequentialism is a broader umbrella category that covers utilitarianism – it is the view that all and
only actions maximizing good states of affairs are right:
- Unlike consequentialists, utilitarians think that only happiness matters; consequentialists value
multiple things individually such as friendship, etc.
- Never permissible to do anything less than the impartial best (state of affairs)
Non-consequentialism (de-ontological) views states that it is sometimes permissible to do less than the
impartial best (state of affairs); no action is inherently good or bad:
- In some cases it is wrong to bring about the impartial best due to constraints (e.g. torture for
the same of safety and security)
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