15/12/2015
School of Computer Science
15 December 2015
CMP2091M Professional Practice Utilitarianism
Review
• Morals
– Our personal code of right and wrong – Natured or nurtured
– In the short term – unchangeable
• Ethics
– The rationale and reasoning behind our morals
– Applied ethics – what is right or wrong in a given
situation
• Shared Ethics
– Largely articulated through our subscription to the notion of law
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Black and White
• As we discussed last week
– We do not all subscribe to the same laws with the same determinism
– We also break laws that we deem ‘unworthy’ of us – Without context laws are flexible (malleable,
breakable)
• Our notion of applied ethics therefore is lacking
• We need alternate (additional) frameworks to establish whether something is ethically sound or not
• For this module I concentrate on secular ethics
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Consequentialism
• A specific principle in philosophy
• an action is judged to be good or bad depending on its consequences
• actions which have good results are moral actions
• good results = happiness
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Utilitarianism
• A consequentialist philosophy
• Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
• The right action is the one that maximises general happiness
• i.e. brings about the greatest amount of pleasure
• or the least amount of pain
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Utilitarianism
• John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
• a political and social commentator
• believed moral behaviour consisted of maximising the general good by
• ‘doing that which produces the greatest good for the greatest number‘
• He implied that happiness can be measured
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Utilitarian calculus
• Utilitarianism therefore implies • the ends justify the means
• that happiness is quantifiable
• And requires a calculation – Either before the event
– Or after
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Before the event
• Identify alternative courses of action
• Work out how much happiness each produces
• The moral action is the one that produces most happiness
• …or the least amount of pain
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After the event
• Identify who the key actors were
• Work out how much happiness was generated as a consequence of the action(s) (h)
• Work out how much pain was caused (p)
• Calculate the difference (h – p)
• Positive outcome = ethically sound
• Negative outcome = ethically unsound
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Problems with utilitarianism?
• how can happiness and/or pleasure be quantified?
• are there morals to be applied within this calculus?
– whose happiness counts?
– Is a murderer’s happiness the same as mine? • Mill argued for qualitative approach
– ‘Socrates’ happiness is more valuable than a fool’
• Difficulties with evaluation mechanisms – especially of non-happiness
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Temporal Framing • 20:20 foresight?
– Impact of this on pre-event calculations?
– post-event utilitarianism method requires an
understanding of where to stop the evaluation • Your evaluation can change dependent
upon the ‘when’ as well as the ‘what’ • e.g. Hiroshima
• In your exam you may need to state assumptions about temporal issues
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Examples
– The torture of a suspect in an anti-terrorism investigation
• Post-event
– The setting up of Pirate Bay
• Pre-event
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Next Session Deontology plus Exam Support
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