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Utilitarianism is an 1861 essay written by English philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill, considered to be a classic exposition and defense of utilitarianism in ethics. It was originally published as a series of three separate articles in Fraser's Magazine in 1861 before it was collected and reprinted as a single work in 1863. [ 1 ]
Some see negative utilitarianism as a branch within modern hedonistic utilitarianism, which assigns a higher weight to the avoidance of suffering than to the promotion of happiness. [69] The moral weight of suffering can be increased by using a "compassionate" utilitarian metric, so that the result is the same as in prioritarianism .
In social choice and operations research, the utilitarian rule (also called the max-sum rule) is a rule saying that, among all possible alternatives, society should pick the alternative which maximizes the sum of the utilities of all individuals in society.
As an example, one's attitude toward ice cream may serve a utilitarian function because it is likely to be based on the reward (e.g., enjoyable taste) and punishments (e.g., weight gain) associated with ice cream and to guide behavior that maxims benefits while minimizing costs (e.g., eating low-fat ice cream) (Shavitt & Nelson, 2002 [7]).
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation is a book by the English philosopher and legal theorist Jeremy Bentham "originally printed in 1780, and first published in 1789." [ 1 ] Bentham's "most important theoretical work," [ 2 ] it is where Bentham develops his theory of utilitarianism and is the first major book on the topic.
While these other theories would also support minimizing suffering, they would give special weight to reducing the suffering of those who are in the worse position. The term "negative utilitarianism" is used by some authors to denote the theory that reducing negative well-being is the only thing that ultimately matters morally. [4]
Today utilitarianism has spread throughout applied ethics as one of a number of approaches. Non-utilitarian approaches in applied ethics are also now used when questioning the ethics of economic systems – e.g. rights-based ( deontological ) approaches.
This is an incomplete list of advocates of utilitarianism and/or consequentialism This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources .