Department of Philosophy

ONLINE JOINT SEMINAR
The University of Hong Kong
Lingnan University
National University of Singapore

Abelard Podgorski
National University of Singapore

“Utilitarianishm” and Complaints

Thursday
22 September 2022
4:00-5:45 pm

Zoom link:
https://hku.zoom.us/j/92448586439?pwd=amJPTmpReUdzYkZCbXFhUnFwcms3Zz09

Abstract:
Many people are attracted to standard consequentialist utilitarianism in spite of a host of familiar objections. I think this is not surprising given the pluralist, deontological, and virtue-ethical views it is typically pitted against. Compared to those views, it is simple, relatively tractable, grounded in an appealing idea about what matters most morally, and theoretically elegant. But I think its plausibility is exaggerated by the fact that people are looking so far into the distance for alternatives. In this talk, I consider a view which is much closer to utilitarianism – the view that we ought to minimize complaints derived from peoples’ welfare. This view, I’ll argue, is like standard utilitarianism in just the right ways – by being monistic about value, welfarist, and aggregative – to secure its most important advantages. But it also departs from utilitarianism in just the right ways to avoid a number of natural objections. In the end, I claim, there is simply very little to say in favor of utilitarianism over this view.

For inquiries:
Nathaniel Sharadin
sharadin@hku.hk