Problems With Calculating Utility

Question 1

What are the questions for governments

Answer 1

Should we aim for average or total happiness

Question 2

What is an example of a scenario that governments would have to judge whether to act on the total of average happiness

Answer 2

Is it better to have a large population of people who are less happy or a population where you may be happier per person but with a lower total happiness as there is less people

Question 3

What do utilitarians think of the distribution of happiness

Answer 3

All happiness matters equally however most actions only affect some people

Question 4

What is an example relating to the distribution of happiness

Answer 4

Is it better to have one person with 50% happiness or have ten people with 10% happiness. The total happiness is the same in both cases. Utilitarianism argues that it is better to have more people with less happiness as a wider more even distribution is the ideal aim

Question 5

What is an example relating to whether consequences end

Answer 5

You save a drowning boy that would later become a dictator that was responsible for the deaths of millions.

Question 6

What is the problem relating to saving the drowning boy example

Answer 6

Is the moral value of an act is based on the consequences, then it has to be constantly revised and there can be no “final” moral value

Question 7

What is the basis for moral equality

Answer 7

Our sentience, the ability to feel pain or pleasure

Question 8

What did singer argue

Answer 8

Animals are also sentient so we need to take their interests into account if we don’t he claims that it is speciesism (treating species different for no good reason)

Question 9

What can singers argument be written as

Answer 9

P1) if only humans have moral status, there must be some special quality that all humans share
P2) all human specific possibilities for such a quality will be a quality that humans lack( for example intelligence)
P3) the only possible candidates will be qualities that other animals have too
C) therefore we cannot argue that only human beings deserve moral status

Question 10

Who is responsible for the Criticism of an alien way of discussing animals

Answer 10

Cora diamond

Question 11

What does Cora diamond argue

Answer 11

Objects to the idea the sentience is the only thing we should judge moral value on. She argues that if we only value sentience there world be no problem eating dead humans or amputated limbs

Question 12

How does diamond argue on how to change peoples views

Answer 12

Argue from within the complex moral landscape not just by ranking everything by sentience