Introduction

Eggleston, Ben; Miller, Daniel E.; Weinstein, David

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195381245.003.0001

Cited by 3 publications

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“…We recoil at the prospect of an innocent person being killed so that their resources are distributed to others who would more efficiently benefit from them, yet the consequentialist can plausibly embrace this common-sense reaction because of our shared and vital interest in protecting personal security. This point is crucial for Mill, and it is one we would do well to remember: the safeguards provided by the concepts of rights and justice must be powerfully insulated from direct consequentialist evaluations because their justifications depend on ensuring individual security and the continuing expectation of security in civil society (Sumner, 2006, p. 192; Miller, 2010, p. 105; and Eggleston, 2011, pp. 75–78).…”

Section: Sophisticated Consequentialism and Personal Securitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Would a Viable Consent App Create Headaches for Consequentialists?

Woodcock

2023

Philosophy

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Greater public awareness of the occurrence of sexual assault has led to the creation of mobile phone apps designed to facilitate consent between sexual partners. These apps exhibit serious practical shortcomings in realistic contexts; however, in this paper I consider the hypothetical case in which these practical shortcomings are absent. The prospect of this viable consent app creates an interesting challenge for consequentialism – one that is comparable to the objection that the theory justifies killing innocent persons to prevent large numbers of less serious harms like experiencing brief, painful headaches. I outline and reject the most straightforward way for consequentialists to address this challenge, and I argue that the empirical calculations at stake reveal something rarely appreciated: consequentialists ought to sometimes favour reinforcing deontological constraints in common-sense morality rather than seeking to undermine them.

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Section: Sophisticated Consequentialism and Personal Securitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Would a Viable Consent App Create Headaches for Consequentialists?

Woodcock

2023

Philosophy

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“…"[H]appiness is the sole end of human action, and the promotion of it the test by which to judge of all human conduct; from whence it necessarily follows that it must be the criterion of morality, since a part is included in the whole" (Utilitarianism, X: 237, my emphasis). See Eggleston, Miller, and Weinstein (2010) for useful discussion. 4 See Skorupski (1989: 164ff.…”

Section: Mill On the Art Of Thinkingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mill on the primacy of practical reason

Macleod

2018

Analysis

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In this article, I wish to argue that J.S. Mill holds that theoretical reason is subordinate to practical reason. Ultimately, this amounts to the claim that the norms of theoretical reasonthose rules governing how we ought to believeare grounded in considerations of utility. I begin, in section 1, by offering an outline of Mill's account of 'Art of Life' (the body of rules governing how we should act), before turning in section 2, to Mill's account of the 'Art of Thinking' (the body of rules governing how we should believe). In section 3, I suggest that, for Mill, the Art of Thinking is subordinate to the Art of Life, and that in an important sense, therefore, theoretical reason is subordinate to practical reason. 2 All arts, Mill claims, are derived from the assumption that some object or state of affairs is valuable. "Every art has one first principle, or general major premise, not borrowed from science; that which enunciates the object aimed at, and affirms it to be a desirable object" (System, VIII: 949). "The art proposes to itself an end to be attained, defines the end, and hands it over to the science. The science receives it, considers it as a phenomenon or effect to be studied, and having investigated its causes and conditions, sends it back to art with a theorem of the combination of circumstances by which it could be produced" (System, VIII: 944). Each art is therefore formulated as an autonomous action-guiding body of rules, informed by a scientific understanding of the world, designed to bring about a specified end considered desirable: "[a]n art, or a body of art, consists of the rules, together with as much of the speculative propositions as comprises the justification of those rules" (System, VIII: 947). Mill offers the examples of "architecture" and the "medical arts". Architecture is the body of rules which aims at "beautiful or imposing" buildings; medicine is the body of rules which aims at the "preservation of health" (System, VIII: 949). We might term the ends of the individual arts proximate ends. Such ends, Mill notes, are not self-certifying, and can often come into conflict. The job of justifying and reconciling the ends set by the various arts-discerning their "place in the scale of desirable things", and determining what we should do, all things considered-is given to what he terms the "Art of Life" or "Practical Reason"

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Lebenskunst

Derpmann

2024

Mill-Handbuch

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Introduction

Cited by 3 publications

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Would a Viable Consent App Create Headaches for Consequentialists?

Would a Viable Consent App Create Headaches for Consequentialists?

Mill on the primacy of practical reason

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