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That the child may be happy is not a morally important reason to create them. By contrast, that the child may be unhappy is an important moral reason not to create them. If it were the case that the absence of pleasure is bad even if someone does not exist to experience its absence, then we would have a significant moral reason to create a ...
That is, positive utility functions as a tiebreaker in that it determines which outcome is better (or less bad) when the outcomes considered have equal disutility. [21] "Lexical threshold" negative utilitarianism says that there is some disutility, for instance some extreme suffering, such that no positive utility can counterbalance it. [22 ...
According to the Narrow Principle, it is wrong, if other things are equal, to do what would be either bad for, or worse for, the people who ever live. It is therefore wrong to have the Wretched Child, since this would be bad for him. But it is in no way wrong to fail to have the Happy Child. [12]
The demandingness objection is a common [1] [2] argument raised against utilitarianism and other consequentialist ethical theories. The consequentialist requirement that we maximize the good impartially seems to this objection to require us to perform acts that we would normally consider optional.
Punishment might make "bad people" into "better" ones. For the utilitarian, all that "bad person" can mean is "person who's likely to cause unwanted things (like suffering)". So, utilitarianism could recommend punishment that changes someone such that they are less likely to cause bad things. Successful rehabilitation would reduce recidivism. [155]
He believes that negative utilitarianism is the right one because the good things in life do not compensate for the bad things; first and foremost, the best things do not compensate for the worst things such as, for example, the experiences of terrible pain, the agonies of the wounded, sick or dying.
People may choose to order off of the children’s menu at restaurants for various reasons, whether it’s because they’re a picky eater, want a smaller portion, or a cheaper meal.
Two-level utilitarianism is virtually a synthesis of the opposing doctrines of act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism. Act utilitarianism states that in all cases the morally right action is the one which produces the most well-being, whereas rule utilitarianism states that the morally right action is the one that is in accordance with a ...