Evolution, Utilitarianism, and Normative Uncertainty

Animal Rights Theory and Utilitarianism: Relative Normative Guidance

In Practical Ethics, Peter Singer rejects the notion that ethics is "an ideal system which is all very noble in theory but no good in practice." [2] Singer identifies deontological approaches to ethics, such as rights theories, as impractical and as having to "rescue" themselves from their inapplicability to moral issues in the real world through the introduction of "complexities" such as formu...

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

Offline Evolution of Normative Systems

An approach to the pre-runtime design of normative systems for problem-solving multi-agent systems (MAS) is suggested. A key element of this approach is to employ evolutionary mechanisms to evolve efficient normative systems. To illustrate, a genetic algoritm is used in the process of designing a normative system for an example MAS based on the Dalmas architecture for normregulated MAS. It is d...

Utilitarianism, Conscience and Animals