Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T11:53:48.066Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Course of Action Utilitarianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Eric B. Dayton
Eric B. Dayton*
Affiliation:
University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The way individual actions enter into larger courses of action often has an effect on the utility of those individual actions. This simple fact has motivated recent discussions about the intelligibility of act-utilitarianism. (See [1], [2], [4], [5], [6], [7], [10] and [11].) It has become clear that act-utilitarianism is incomplete, if not intelligible, without an account of the utility-making properties of courses of action taken as a whole. In this paper I offer a brief discussion of the difficulties of a simple act-utilitarianism and then offer three complementary principles in which the utility of an action is made to depend upon the courses of action of which it may be a constituent. I hope that the discussion will be of interest not only to committed act-utilitarians but to its sympathetic critics as well.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 9 , Issue 4 , December 1979 , pp. 671 - 684
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1979

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

[1] Bergstrom, Lars. “On the Formulation and Application of Utilitarianism”. Nous 10 (1976), pp. 121-44.10.2307/2214572CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[2] Castaneda, H-N. “A Problem for Utilitarianism”. Analysis 28 (1968), pp. 141-42.10.1093/analys/28.4.141CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[3] Castaneda, H-N. “Intentions and Intending”. American Philosophical Quarterly 9(1972), pp. 139-49.Google Scholar
[4] Castaneda, H-N. “On the Problem of Formulating a Coherent Act-Utilitarianism”. Analysis 32 (1972), pp. 118-24.10.1093/analys/32.4.118CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[5] Castaneda, H-N. “Ought, Value and Utilitarianism”. American Philosophical Quarterly 6 (1969), pp. 257-75.Google Scholar
[6] Dayton, Eric. “Towards a Credible Act-Utilitarianism”. American Philosophical Quarterly.Google Scholar
[7] Feldman, Fred. “World Utilitarianism”. In Analysis and Metaphysics, edited by Lehrer, K., pp. 255-71. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1975.10.1007/978-94-010-9098-8_14CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[8] Locke, John. Of Civil Government. Chicago, Henry Regnery, 1955.Google Scholar
[9] Savage, Leonard J. Foundations of Statistics. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1954.Google Scholar
[10] Sobel, Howard. “Utilitarianism and Past and Future Mistakes”. Nous 10 (1976), pp. 196–220.10.2307/2214575CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[11] Sobel, Howard. “Value, Alternatives and Utilitarianism”. Nous 5 (1971), pp. 373-84.10.2307/2214384CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[12] Vickers, John. “Utility and Its Ambiguities”. Erkenntnis 9 (1975), pp. 287–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar