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MIT 24 06J - Utilitarianism

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MIT OpenCourseWarehttp://ocw.mit.edu 24.06J / STS.006J Bioethics Spring 2009 For information about citing these materials or our Terms of Use, visit: http://ocw.mit.edu/terms.24.06 Utilitarianism 2 – Handout We are talking about hedonic utilitarianism, a moral theory built on two claims: Value: The intrinsic value of a world-history is determined by the amount of pleasure and suffering that it contains – pleasure adds to its value, suffering subtracts from its value. Rightness: An act is wrong when its outcome has less intrinsic value than the outcome of some other act available to the agent, and right otherwise. Value When we calculate the amount of pleasure / pain in a world history, we must account for the grade of the pleasure / pain the intensity of the pleasure / pain the number of people experiencing the pleasure / pain the duration of the pleasure / pain What weight should we give to each of these factors? One thing that you might think is that, at the extremes, differences in intensity and grade trump differences in numbers. Letintensity level n pain be the pain you experience in an electric chair set at n volts. You might think that it is worse that one person experience level 100 pain (excruciating agony) than that any number of people experience level 1 pain (the mildest of mild pain –comparable to an incipient hangnail.) Mill appeared to think something like this. Here is an argument against this view: let S0 be a state of affairs in which 100 peoplesuffers level 100 pain for a day, S1 be a state of affairs in which 101 people suffer level 99pain for a day, …, and S99 be a state of affairs in which 1099 people suffer level 1 pain fora day. P1 For any k, Sk is better than Sk+1. P2 The better than relation is transitive: if a is better than b, and b better thanc, then a is better than c. C S0 is better than S99. What weight should we give to pleasure vs. suffering? There may not be perfect formula. RightnessShould we always try to calculate the pleasure and suffering that will result from ourdoing one thing or another? – No, because sometimes calculating will be counter-productive, by utilitarian standards. Sometimes calculating will make the world worse. -- when we have to make a decision quickly. -- when other people care about how we make our


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MIT 24 06J - Utilitarianism

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