PHIL 2525 Contemporary Moral Issues

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PHIL 2525Contemporary Moral Issues

• Lec 10
• Utilitarianism

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Lifeboat Ethics...

• Garret Hardin maintains that we have a duty to
  not help the poor and starving of other
  countries...

• Rich nations are like lifeboats.
• The poor are like the drowning people in the
  water.
• If we let them into our lifeboat, we will all die.

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Garrett Hardin

• Freedom of the Commons
• and Resource Allocation
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vL8gAMFTAt2M

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Evaluating Lifeboat Ethics...

• Are rich nations like lifeboats?
• Where did the lifeboats come from?
• Why arent there enough lifeboats?

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Chapter 6 Epigraph

• ...sententious Christian doctrine that the end
  does not justify the means.
• We have to ask now, If the end doesnt justify
  the means, what does? The answer is, obviously,
  Nothing!

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18th Century upheavals
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David Hume

• suggested that we are somehow hard-wired to
  approve of things that help not only ourselves,
  but also society

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JEREMY BENTHAM, 1748-1832

• Reading Hume made him feel as though scales had
  fallen from my eyes.

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Jeremy Bentham

• Morality is about making the world as happy as
  possible

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Jeremy Bentham

• Nature has placed mankind under the governance
  of two sovereign masters
• pain and pleasure.

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Why was Utilitarianism Revolutionary?
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Why was Utilitarianism revolutionary?

• Because it dispensed with God or the Hereafter
  as a moral marker....

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Jeremy Bentham

• The greatest good for the greatest number
• the Hedonic Calculus as a standard for judging
  laws and social institutions

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The Utilitarian Calculus

• Criteria for measuring
• pleasure and pain
• Intensity
• Duration
• Certainty (or uncertainty)
• Nearness (or farness)
• Extent

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Social Reform...

• Government has no place in the bedrooms of the
  nation.

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• The sole factor to be considered . is the
  balance of social good vs. social evil. Moral
  intuitions, social traditions or Gods wishes are
  not relevant.

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Bentham advanced the principle of utility

• Advocated the greatest happiness of the greatest
  number
• Suggested the Hedonic Calculus as a standard
  for judging laws and social institutions.

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J. S. Mill 1806-1873

• Not merely the quantity of pleasure, but the
  quality of happiness had to be calculated.
• Some pleasures are better than others

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• "Better to be a human being dissatisfied than a
  pig satisfied.
• Better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool
  satisfied.
• John Stuart Mill

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J. S. Mill 1806-1873

• Actions are right in proportion as they tend to
  promote happiness wrong as they tend to produce
  the reverse of happiness.

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Lifeboat situations...
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(No Transcript)
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Utilitarian Beliefs

• Moral rules are merely rules of thumb
• The point is to achieve the greatest good for the
  greatest number
• Utilitarianism is a Consequentialist Theory

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Matthew Donnelly and his right to die...
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Utilitarianism and non-human animals

• The question is not whether they can talk or
  reason .....
• ..... but whether they can suffer.

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The Meatrix...
http//www.youtube.com/watch?vrEkc70ztOrc
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Jeremy Bentham

• The time will come when humanity will extend its
  mantle over everything which breathes... "

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Midterm sneak peek....

• Pages 1 to 99
• Lectures, text and readings
• Short answer and multiple choice (40 marks)
• Ten essay questions (60 marks)
• I will choose six
• You will choose three