Abstract
Although ethics and axiology are closely related to each other and sometimes overlap, they are normally still considered two separate subareas of philosophy. However, in utilitarianism, since the principle of utility asserts that the ultimate criterion for morality is maximal utility, the essence of utilitarianism finally reduces to the maximization of aggregate or social utility, which, as I interpret it, is a function of values. Furthermore, in the unified utilitarian theory, “good” is used to describe what has a positive value. Therefore value theory is not only related to moral philosophy, but also becomes the basis of moral judgments.
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Notes
G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (London: Cambridge University Press, 1966), pp. 6–17.
R. B. Perry, A General Theory of Value (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 115–145.
Jeremy Bentham, “An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation,” in Ethical Theories: A Book of Readings, ed. A.I. Melden (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1955), pp. 359–361.
Richard B. Brandt, “Toward a Credible Form of Utilitarianism,” in Contemporary Utilitarianism, ed. Michael D. Bayles (Gloucester, Massachusetts: Peter Smith, 1978), pp. 143–186. Richard B. Brandt, “Some Merits of One Form of Utilitarianism,” in Mill: Utilitarianism, ed. Samuel Gorovitz (Indianapolis, Indiana: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1971), pp. 143-186.
John C. Harsanyi, “Rule Utilitarianism, Equality, and Justice,” paper for the Conference on Philosophy, Economics, and Justice, at the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, May 20-22, 1983.
Dan W. Brock, “Chapter 9: Utilitarianism,” in And Justice for All: New Introductory Essays in Ethics and Public Policy, ed. Tom Regan and Donald VanDeVeer (Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield, 1982), pp. 217–240. Brock writes, “Nevertheless, we suggest the provisional conclusion that the measurement problem does not constitute an insuperable objection to utilitarianism. It is also worth adding that since nearly all other alternative moral theories also take effects on happiness or desire satisfaction to be one (though, unlike utilitarianism, not the only) relevant consideration in the moral evaluation of actions, they too are faced with giving an account of how interpersonal comparisons of utility are sensible. Were this in fact an insuperable difficulty, it would bring down most moral theories, and not just utilitarianism.”
John Stuart Mill, “Utilitarianism,” in Mill: Utilitarianism, with Critical Essays, ed. Samuel Gorovitz (Indianapolis, Indiana: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1971), pp. 38–39.
Fred Feldman, Introductory Ethics (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1978), pp.
James Griffin, Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement and Moral Importance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).
See Note 6, p. 222.
See, for instance, Ralph L. Keeney and Howard Raiffa, Decision with Multiple Objectives: Preferences and Value Tradeoffs (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1976), p. 150.
D. W. Prall, “A Study in the Theory of Value,” University of California Publications in Philosophy, Vol. 3, No. 2 (1921), pp. 215–227. Prall writes, “Anything is properly said to have a value in case, and only in case, it is the object of the affective motor response which we call being interested in, positively or negatively, … The being liked, or disliked, of the object is its value. And since the being liked or disliked, is being the subject of a motor-affective attitude in a subject, some sort of a subject is always requisite to there being value at all—not necessarily a judging subject, but a subject capable of at least motor-affective response.”
See Note 2. Perry writes, “We have thus been led to define value as the peculiar relation between any interest and its object, or that special character of an object which consists in the fact that interest is taken in it. ”
See Note 2.
Douglas Den Uyl and Tibor R. Machan, “Recent Work on the Concept of Happiness,” American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 20 (April 1983), pp. 115–134.
John Stuart Mill, “Utilitarianism,” In Mill: Utilitarianism, ed. Samuel Gorovitz (Indianapolis, Indiana: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1971), pp. 13–57.
See Note 15.
D. W. Haslett, “What is Utility?” Economics and Philosophy, Vol. 6, No. 1 (April 1990), pp. 65–94.
David Gauthier, “On the Refutation of Utilitarianism,” in The Limits of Utilitarianism, ed. Harlan B. Miller and William H. Williams (Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), pp. 144–163.
C. L. Sheng, “Utilitarianism Is Not Indifferent to Distribution,” presented at the Fourth International Conference on Social Philosophy, Oxford, England, August 16-19, 1988; also to be published in Rights, Justice, and Community (The Edwin Meilen Press).
See Note 19.
W. L. Reese, Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion (Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1980), p. 606.
Peter C. Fishburn, Decision and Value Theory (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1964), pp. 39–40.
Ibid.
Peter Miller, “Axiology: A Metaphysical Theme in Ethics,” The Journal of Value Inquiry, Vol. 17 (1983), pp. 3–16.
Ibid.
K. E. Goodpaster, “From Egoism to Environmental ism,“ in Ethics and Problems of the 21st Century, ed. K. E. Goodpaster and K.M. Sayre (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), pp. 21–35.
See Note 22, p. 2.
Hastings Rashdall, The Theory of Good and Evil (London: Oxford University Press, 1971).
Jan Narveson, Morality and Utility (Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1967), p. 43.
Ibid.
R. G. Frey, “Introduction: Utilitarianism and Persons,” in Utility and Rights, ed. R. G. Frey (Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), pp. 3–19. Frey writes, “In recent years, however, numerous writers have moved away from a mental-state view of utility and value, on the ground that it is too confining to restrict utility to a concern with states of mind, to an interest-satisfaction view, in which ‘interest’ is a generic term covering a multiplicity of desires and preferences. Thus, construed as I have done, here, preference-utilitarianism is classical utilitarianism with an expanded value theory.”
Ibid.
F. C. Sharp, Ethics (New York: The Century Company, 1928), pp. 109, 410-411.
See Note 2, pp. 3, 107, 109.
See Note 3.
Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, translated into English by H. P. Paton (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), p. 61.
See Note 1, p. 21.
Joseph Raz, “Right-Based Moralities,” in Utility and Rights, pp. 42–60.
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Sheng, C.L. (1991). A Theory of Value. In: A New Approach to Utilitarianism. Theory and Decision Library, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3192-6_4
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