utilitarianism
utilitarianism
Definition
utili·tari·an·ism (-iz′əm)
noun
- the doctrine that the worth or value of anything is determined solely by its utility
- the doctrine, developed by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, that the purpose of all action should be to bring about the greatest happiness of the greatest number
- utilitarian character or quality
utilitarianism
Usage Examples
Converse of subject
- tell: An agent can be told by utilitarianism to do something terrible in order to avoid something even worse, as Jim and George are.
Converse of object
- make: This shift of emphasis was originally the work of economists looking for a way of making utilitarianism operational.
- advocate: Spencer as much as Mill, then, advocates indirect utilitarianism by featuring robust moral rights.
- consider: Utilitarians will claim that an ideal public should at least consider utilitarianism a plausible doctrine.
- call: Beginning particularly with John Stuart Mill, bourgeois science differentiated itself into an Ethics called Utilitarianism and a science called Economics.
Adjective modifier
- liberal: Whether Spencer actually envisioned his liberal utilitarianism this way is unclear.
- Benthamite: Benthamite utilitarianism does involve a commitment to individual welfare, but not to personal freedom.
- classical: Such reasoning supports, I then argue, conclusions about value that support an account of the concept broadly consistent with classical utilitarianism.
- indirect: Spencer as much as Mill, then, advocates indirect utilitarianism by featuring robust moral rights.
- narrow: Those who perceived a narrow utilitarianism as dominant took the opposite view.
Noun used with modifier
- act: Why bother with substitute sources of stand-in obligation when, thanks to having become moral saints, act utilitarianism will fortunately always do?
- rule: Act and rule utilitarianism Bentham tended to deal with the consequences of acts.
- preference: Apparently it even has a name: preference utilitarianism.
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