Introduction to Utilitarianism

As an abstract ideal, utilitarianism may sound like simple common sense. But utilitarianism has some implications that are counterintuitive. This essay explores how psychological biases can explain anti-utilitarian intuitions.

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Outline:

(01:20) Deviations from Impartiality

(04:25) Deviations from Maximization

(08:03) Deviations from Consequentialism

(15:50) Deviations from Aggregate Welfarism

(21:12) Normative Implications

(28:08) Practical Implications

(29:10) About the Authors

The original text contained 123 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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This essay discusses the value of voting from a utilitarian perspective. It explores how to estimate the chance of casting a decisive vote, how to think about the stakes of an election, and whether we can reliably identify which candidate is better.

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Outline:

(00:29) Introduction

(04:27) The Chance of Casting a Decisive Vote

(08:42) The Argument (applied to our case)

(11:24) Impartiality and Altruism

(14:19) Determining the Better Candidate

(16:56) About the Author

The original text contained 7 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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Expected Utility Maximization directs us to weigh the value associated with each possible outcome by its probability, yielding an overall expected value. This essay explains Expected Utility Maximization as a decision theory and defends its most distinctive feature: that it can advise us to choose options that will predictably lose.

This essay was adapted (with permission) from two of Joe Carlsmith's essays on expected utility theory—"Skyscrapers and madmen" and "Why it can be OK to predictably lose"—and edited and rewritten for utilitarianism.net by Vikram Balasubramanian.

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Outline:

(00:31) On Expected Utility

(03:30) Maximal Skyscraper

(05:59) Only One Shot

(09:37) Why it is OK to predictably lose

(10:28) Conditional Probabilities

(15:29) Nothing special about getting saved by heads versus tails

(18:54) What would everyone prefer?

(20:24) Taking Responsibility

(24:16) About the Authors

The original text contained 7 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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Many students of economics and philosophy have been puzzled by whether utility is cardinally or only ordinally measurable, and whether interpersonal comparisons of utility are possible in principle and in practice. This essay attempts to answer these questions, using simple arguments.

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Outline:

(00:15) Abstract

(01:39) Is Utility Ordinal or Cardinal?

(06:26) Does Welfare Economics Need Interpersonal Utility Comparison?

(09:15) The Commonsense Case for Cardinal Utility and Interpersonal Utility Comparisons

(10:51) The Practical Measurement and Interpersonal Comparison of Utilities

(17:06) Concluding Remarks

(18:08) About the Author

The original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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Study guide for Peter Singer's Animal Liberation (1975).

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Outline:

(00:13) Introduction

(01:09) Singer's Argument Against Speciesism

(04:55) Factory Farming

(07:13) Equal Consideration versus Identical Treatment

(11:14) Objections

(15:43) Practical Implications

(19:10) Conclusion

(20:07) Discussion Questions

(21:25) Want to learn more about utilitarianism?

(21:28) Resources and Further Reading

The original text contained 16 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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Most of our readers will probably learn from these pages for the first time, that there has arisen in the United States, and in the most civilised and enlightened portion of them, an organised agitation on a new question - new, not to thinkers, nor to any one by whom the principles of free and popular government are felt as well as acknowledged, but new, and even unheard of, as a subject for public meetings and practical political action. This question is, the enfranchisement of women; their admission, in law and in fact, to equality in all rights, political, civil, and social, with the male citizens of the community.It will add to the surprise with which many will receive this intelligence, that the agitation which has commenced is not a pleading by male writers and orators for women, those who are professedly to be benefitted remaining either indifferent or ostensibly hostile: it is a political movement, practical in its objects, carried on in a form which denotes an intention to persevere. And it is a movement not merely for women, but by them. Its first public manifestation appears to have been a Convention of Women, held in the State of [...]

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On Liberty (1859) details Mill's view that individuals should be left wholly free to engage in any activity, thought or belief that does not harm others. Simple though it sounds, it is a position that challenges our ideas on the very nature of government and society, and sheds light on some of the key issues we face today. A key text of political philosophy, On Liberty has been continuously in print since its first publication.

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On Liberty (1859) details Mill's view that individuals should be left wholly free to engage in any activity, thought or belief that does not harm others. Simple though it sounds, it is a position that challenges our ideas on the very nature of government and society, and sheds light on some of the key issues we face today. A key text of political philosophy, On Liberty has been continuously in print since its first publication.

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