There are variants of utilitarianism that try to account for other values besides happiness. Preference utilitarianism is probably the most famous example. Derek Parfit's "Success Theory" is the one that seems most sensible and complete to me, although I am sure there are things that it is missing.
There are variants of utilitarianism that try to account for other values besides happiness. Preference utilitarianism is probably the most famous example. Derek Parfit's "Success Theory" is the one that seems most sensible and complete to me, although I am sure there are things that it is missing.
I think the value of utilitarianism comes not from its definition of happiness as the only good, which is wrong headed. Rather, it is its view that what is good in life is something people should increase, and that actions that increase it more or for more people are proportionately more good. I think people can endorse this general ethical idea without endorsing utilitarianism.
Whatever you define as good, in normal situations all the variations of utilitarianism agree. Making sure more people are healthy, safe, economically secure, etc, maximizes pretty much any plausible formulation of the good.
You’re right that utilitarianism’s strength lies in its emphasis on increasing what is good in life for more people. This general ethical intuition resonates with many frameworks, not just utilitarianism. However, preference utilitarianism, like classical utilitarianism, faces significant challenges in practice. Without a universal metric for welfare, it becomes difficult to handle trade-offs between subjective experiences or to compare and aggregate across individuals. While these issues are abstract, they have real implications for policy-making.
I agree that in normal situations, different formulations of utilitarianism (and indeed many ethical theories) converge on similar goals—health, safety, and economic security. However, the edge cases where these formulations diverge highlight important limitations that are worth exploring. I’ll touch on contributions from theorists like Harsanyi and Binmore in later posts, as they do provide some interesting answers to these questions. I'll likely discuss Parfit’s “Success Theory” then.
There are variants of utilitarianism that try to account for other values besides happiness. Preference utilitarianism is probably the most famous example. Derek Parfit's "Success Theory" is the one that seems most sensible and complete to me, although I am sure there are things that it is missing.
I think the value of utilitarianism comes not from its definition of happiness as the only good, which is wrong headed. Rather, it is its view that what is good in life is something people should increase, and that actions that increase it more or for more people are proportionately more good. I think people can endorse this general ethical idea without endorsing utilitarianism.
Whatever you define as good, in normal situations all the variations of utilitarianism agree. Making sure more people are healthy, safe, economically secure, etc, maximizes pretty much any plausible formulation of the good.
You’re right that utilitarianism’s strength lies in its emphasis on increasing what is good in life for more people. This general ethical intuition resonates with many frameworks, not just utilitarianism. However, preference utilitarianism, like classical utilitarianism, faces significant challenges in practice. Without a universal metric for welfare, it becomes difficult to handle trade-offs between subjective experiences or to compare and aggregate across individuals. While these issues are abstract, they have real implications for policy-making.
I agree that in normal situations, different formulations of utilitarianism (and indeed many ethical theories) converge on similar goals—health, safety, and economic security. However, the edge cases where these formulations diverge highlight important limitations that are worth exploring. I’ll touch on contributions from theorists like Harsanyi and Binmore in later posts, as they do provide some interesting answers to these questions. I'll likely discuss Parfit’s “Success Theory” then.