There was a very interesting tension pointed out to me yesterday in my moral philosophy. As regular readers know, I am broadly utilitarian–I think that we should try to promote the general welfare. I am concerned with the consequences of moral decisions rather than their motivation, and I do not think hard, fast rules forbidding given behaviours without regard to situational consequences are good ideas. I have, however, recently seemingly changed a position somewhere, because I now find myself embracing, in some situations, what looks like an egoist view. The egoist position is that a person should do what is good for them, not what is good for society at large. So how do I square this circle? Let me see if it can be done.
Tag: Utilitarianism
A Critique of Just War Theory
Today I had a seminar on just war theory, the theory of when it is justifiable for one state to go to war with another. Throughout the seminar, it continued to strike me that just war theory in and of itself is a mistaken concept. Let me show you what I mean.
Using People
One of the frequent criticisms of consequentialist ethics (the notion that whether or not a given course of action is just depends upon the consequences, the results, of said action) is that it has a tendency to treat use people like objects, to treat them as a means rather than as an end. I propose today to challenge this critique.
Distribution of Health
An interesting topic arose in one of my seminars today–given a scarce amount of health resources, how do we determine whom we provide care to and whom we do not? Forget for a moment the distribution of wealth, what about the distribution of health? I would like to give my answer to that question today.
Keynesian Utilitarianism
In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls draws a hard distinction between his prioritarian conception of justice and the utilitarian one. We have mentioned prioritarianism in the past, and indeed, this post is a bit of a synthesis of that post with this other one. Prioritarianism is the notion that a just society always tries to improve the welfare of the worst off before anyone else. In other words, the welfare of the poorest is prioritised. In contrast, utilitarianism is about maximising total welfare, regardless of the distribution. These theories seem at odds (indeed, Rawls wrote about utilitarianism as though he were very much at odds with it). Yet, if we adopt a few Keynesian economic principles, I believe the gap can be closed and the two theories shown to lead to more or less synonymous societies, or at least significantly more similar societies than is presently thought.
Benjamin Studebaker 