Evolution and Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism and the Evolution of Ecological Ethics

R.M. Hare's two-level utilitarianism provides a useful framework for understanding the evolution of codes of professional ethics. From a Harean perspective, the codes reflect both the fact that members of various professions face special kinds of ethically charged situations in the normal course of their work, and the need for people in special roles to acquire various habits of thought and act...

Utilitarianism and Personal Identity

Utilitarianism, Conscience and Animals

Utilitarianism and prioritarianism II

Acknowledgements I am extremely grateful to John Broome, Wlodek Rabinowicz, Bertil Tungodden and an anonymous referee for exceptionally detailed comments. I have also benefited from comments by audiences at Oxford and Konstanz. Support for this project was provided by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and also by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Federal Ministry of Education a...

Utilitarianism and discrimination

Since Becker (3), a common argument against asymmetric norms that promote minority rights over those of the majority is that such policies reduce total welfare. While this may be the case, we show that there are simple environments where aggregate sum of individual utilities is actually maximized under asymmetric norms that favor minorities. We thus maintain that without information regarding i...