Non-Consequentialist Utilitarianism

Full Text / Article completEthics 101 students read that utilitarianism is a version of consequentialism. It is not, for the following reason. Utilitarianism says that an act is morally right insofar as it maximizes total utility. Consequentialism says that an act is morally right insofar as it maximizes good consequences. Utilitarians may insist that you maximize total utility, you not thereby maximize good consequences. Such utilitarians would be non-consequentialists. I address replies to this simple argument. The replies center on the definitions of utilitarianism and consequentialism, respectively. Then I provide indications that non-consequentialist utilitarianism is not only a coherent and intriguing notion, it is also an important one. In particular, building on Kenneth Arrow, John Harsanyi and others, we may re-describe John Rawls’s social theory as committed both to non-consequentialism and, provocatively but in my view inescapably, to utilitarianism. On this heretical reading, Rawls’s central theory may be non-consequentialist utilitarian.L’'utilitarisme est généralement considéré comme une version du conséquentialisme. Ce n’est pas le cas, pour la raison suivante. L'utilitarisme stipule qu'un acte est moralement juste dans la mesure où il maximise l'utilité totale. Le conséquentialisme dit qu'un acte est moralement juste dans la mesure où il maximise les bonnes conséquences. Les utilitaristes insistent pour que l'utilité totale soit maximisée, même si les bonnes conséquences ne sont pas maximisées. Ces utilitaristes seraient non- conséquentialistes. J'adresse des réponses à cet argument. Les réponses se centrent sur les définitions de l'utilitarisme et du conséquentialisme, respectivement. Ensuite, je fournis des indications que l'utilitarisme non - conséquentialiste n'est pas seulement une notion cohérente et intrigante, mais également importante. En particulier, en s'appuyant sur Kenneth Arrow, John Harsanyi et d’autres, nous pouvons re-décrire la théorie sociale de John Rawls comme étant à la fois non-conséquentialiste et, de manière provocatrice mais à mon avis, inévitable, utilitariste. Sur la base de cette lecture hérétique, la théorie centrale de Rawls peut être considérée comme une forme d’utilitarisme non- conséquentialiste

Sticking with Carrots and Sticks (Sticking Points Aside): A Response to Ventakapuram, Goldberg, and Forrow

I would like to thank Sridhar Ventakapuram, Daniel Goldberg, and Lachlan Forrow for thoughtful responses to my article (1–4). All endorse my main point, that conditioning the very aid that patients need in order to become healthier on their success in becoming healthier is (usually) wrong. They may think me, however, too friendly to an approach that gives patients “carrots” or “sticks” depending on how healthy their choices are. Ventakapuram writes, “What comes out of the article most clearly is that Eyal is fine with the carrots and sticks approach to health policy, he just wants to help clarify what should and should not be the carrots and sticks”

The time-preference Nash solution

We give an axiomatic characterization of the Time-Preference Nash Solution, a bargaining solution that is applied when the underlying preferences are defined over streams of physical outcomes. This bargaining solution is similar to the ordinal Nash solution introduced by Rubinstein, Safra, and Thomson (1992), but it gives a different prediction when the set of physical outcomes is a set of lotteries.

The Time-Preference Nash Solution

We give an axiomatic characterization of the Time-Preference Nash Solution, a bargaining solution that is applied when the underlying preferences are defined over streams of physical outcomes. This bargaining solution is similar to the ordinal Nash solution introduced by Rubinstein, Safra and Thomson (1992), but it gives a different prediction when the set of physical outcomes is a set of lotteries.bargaining, ordinal Nash solution.

A Characterization of the Nash Bargaining Solution

We characterize the Nash bargaining solution replacing the axiom of Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives with three independent axioms: Independence of Non-Individually Rational Alternatives, Twisting and Disagreement Point Convexity. We give a non-cooperative bargaining interpretation to this last axiom.bargaining problem; Nash solution; axiomatic characterization; Independence of Non-Individually Rational Alternatives; Twisting; Disagreement Point Convexity

Probing Supersymmetric Flavor Models with ϵ′/ϵ\epsilon'/\epsilon

We discuss the supersymmetric contribution to $\epsilon'/\epsilon$ in various supersymmetric flavor models. We find that in alignment models the supersymmetric contribution could be significant while in heavy squark models it is expected to be small. The situation is particularly interesting in models that solve the flavor problems by either of the above mechanisms and the remaining CP problems by means of approximate CP, that is, all CP violating phases are small. In such models, the standard model contributions cannot account for $\epsilon'/\epsilon$ and a failure of the supersymmetric contributions to do so would exclude the model. In models of alignment and approximate CP, the supersymmetric contributions can account for $\epsilon'/\epsilon$ only if both the supersymmetric model parameters and the hadronic parameters assume rather extreme values. Such models are then strongly disfavored by the $\epsilon'/\epsilon$ measurements. Models of heavy squarks and approximate CP are excluded.Comment: 16 pages, harvmac. v2: We added a discussion of the intriguing implications that would follow if a recent lattice result is confirme