Lecture 4_ utilitarianism.html (3518B)
1 2 <!DOCTYPE html> 3 <html> 4 <head> 5 <meta charset="UTF-8"> 6 7 <title>Lecture 4: utilitarianism</title> 8 <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css"/></head> 9 <body> 10 <style type="text/css"> 11 nav a { 12 text-align: left; 13 } 14 nav #name { 15 text-align: right; 16 float: right; 17 font-style: italic; 18 } 19 </style> 20 <nav> 21 <a href="index.html">Index</a> 22 <span id="name">Alex Balgavy</span> 23 </nav> 24 <hr> 25 <div class="exported-note"><h1>Lecture 4: utilitarianism</h1> 26 27 <div id="rendered-md"><p>utilitarianism (consequentialism):</p> 28 <ul> 29 <li>weigh costs/benefits of all options, see which option is best</li> 30 <li>only factor that morally matters are consequences of an action on the well-being of everyone, where everyone gets equal consideration.</li> 31 </ul> 32 <p>comparisons:</p> 33 <ul> 34 <li>vs contractualism: starts from assumption that everyone matters equally, while contractualism says that we should do what's in self-interest.</li> 35 <li>vs ethical egoism: looks at well-being of everyone involved, not just own well-being.</li> 36 </ul> 37 <p>"well-being" has different meanings, in principle any of the ones mentioned in <a data-from-md data-resource-id='97ee2dae8b644b3b802094b618067169' title='' href='Lecture 3_ theories of well-being.html' type=''>Lecture 3: theories of well-being</a> can be used<br> 38 if you don't know how an act will play out, you have to work with all of the <em>potential</em> consequences.</p> 39 <ul> 40 <li>that doesn't mean we can't take risks</li> 41 <li>don't always evaluate this, sometimes it takes long time to evaluate all possible consequences, and you won't have time to act</li> 42 </ul> 43 <p>how do you approach issues of e.g. health vs privacy (like tracking people with Corona)?<br> 44 utilitarians: weigh costs/benefits of mass surveillance vs other strategies</p> 45 <ul> 46 <li>but how assign costs to mass surveillance if don't know what's valuable about privacy?</li> 47 <li>argument: I have nothing to hide, please track me 48 <ul> 49 <li>counter 1: prevention of harm - info you share now might be used against you later</li> 50 <li>counter 2: intentional inequity - usually citizens don't see how their data is used</li> 51 <li>counter 3: injustice and discrimination - personal data can be used to discriminate against you</li> 52 <li>counter 4: autonomy and human dignity - mass surveillance threatens our image of private mental life</li> 53 </ul> 54 </li> 55 </ul> 56 <p>problems for utilitarianism:</p> 57 <ul> 58 <li>"an individual's rights may be trampled upon if enough other people benefit" (e.g. killing one person with a rare blood type to transplant their organs and save 5 other people) 59 <ul> 60 <li>response 1: violating people's rights will typically not have the best consequences (e.g. if sacrificing people was common, society would be in stress and fear)</li> 61 <li>response 2: update view so it's typically not ok to violate people's rights. i.e. maximize everyone's well-being, where everyone gets equal consideration</li> 62 <li>response 3: in some select cases, people's rights may be violated (like with the privacy issue)</li> 63 </ul> 64 </li> 65 </ul> 66 </div></div> 67 </body> 68 </html>