Utilitarianism has important implications for how we should think about leading an ethical life. Despite giving no intrinsic weight to deontic constraints, it supports many commonsense prohibitions and virtues in practice. Its main practical difference instead lies in its emphasis on positively doing good, in more expansive and efficient ways than people typically prioritize.| Utilitarianism.net
This chapter presents a toolkit of general strategies for responding to objections to utilitarianism, before introducing the most influential specific objections to the theory.| Utilitarianism.net
After defining utilitarianism, this chapter offers a detailed analysis of its four key elements (consequentialism, welfarism, impartiality, and aggregationism). It explains the difference between maximizing, satisficing, and scalar utilitarianism, and other important distinctions between utilitarian theories.| Utilitarianism.net
The original position is a central feature of John Rawls’s| plato.stanford.edu
Population ethics tackles questions like how we should weigh new lives against existing lives, and how we should balance quantity and quality of life (when comparing different-sized populations). This chapter critically surveys five major approaches to population ethics: the total view, the average view, variable value theories, critical level (and critical range) theories, and person-affecting views.| Utilitarianism.net