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Welcome to Felicifia, my (and hopefully eventually others') blog on utilitarianism. It discusses both utilitarianism's theoretical aspects and its prescriptive implications, i.e. what it implies we should do. Utilitarianism is a system of ethics which says that the right thing to do is whatever maximizes "utility", which here means "happiness" or "quality of life". I happen to support utilitarianism, but hopefully you'll find this site interesting and useful even if you don't.
This page navigates you through all the content on the site so you don't have to scan through all the posts looking for what you want. It will be updated as new content gets added, so you might want to avoid quoting it, since the wordings are liable to change.
There are a few posts about the blog itself. The very first post, Hello, world, gives an intro to this blog: what it's about, and what I'm trying to do with it. Links, Links, Links gives a description of the links provided on the column on the right side of the screen.
I hope to host many open problems in utilitarianism, where we can use this forum to address important matters. There are currently two. Utility Cost Of Greenhouse Gas proposes the problem of how much utility one would have to get from greenhouse gas emissions to justify doing so, given the realities of climate change. Utility Taxonomy proposes the problem of classifying species by their capacity to experience utility. Also, the post Surplus Money features a discussion of what organization is the most worthy recipient of our donations. Other topics I hope to get to include livestock treatment.
I have a few posts on the mathematics of utilitarianism which reads like a textbook. The first post, Utility Curves, introduces the topic and discusses it for single individuals. Next, Utility Curves For Multiple Individuals, extends this to handle more than one person. Total Lifetime Utility gives a more rigorous treatment of total utility across an individual's lifetime and combines this with the work on multiple individuals to provide a representation of "the total utility of the entire universe (as we know it)". Modeling Choice With Utility Curves introduces the use of utility curves in deciding what choice to make. Finally, Handling Uncertainty discusses how to handle choices whose resulting utility is unknown. This includes a mathematical treatment using probability theory and a discussion of risk adapted from decision making in investing. As for future work, I eventually hope to write on the application of optimization techniques.
There is also a discussion of the existing body of work on utilitarianism and related topics. The main post on this topic is Utilitarianism In Academia. The post Utility Measures discusses various existing statistics which attempt to quantify utility on both individual and collective levels. The post Happiness Economics: Recommended Reading takes a closer look at the great work going on in a field called happiness economics. The post Reviewing The Stern Review offers select quotes from the Stern Review Report on the Economics of Climate Change to facilitate reviewing the document. There should be more coming on existing work coming. I especially hope to write more on the neuroscience side as I continue to learn more about it.
There is a small but growing amount of content on personal ethics, i.e. what, from a utilitarian perspective, we should do. The post Vegetarianism And Negative Utility includes a good initial discussion on the ethics of meat consumption. The post Surplus Money discusses what money we should donate to charity and which charity we should donate to. There is also a brief mention of an Oxfam America Matching Campaign that ended on October 2, 2006.
There are several posts on the analysis of real world data. The post Total Human Earth Utility provides a very approximate estimate for how much utility humanity can expect on Earth until the sun no longer supports it. The post Utility Cost Of Greenhouse Gas proposes the problem of how much utility one would have to get from greenhouse gas emissions to justify doing so, given the realities of climate change. The post Population Utility Distribution gives a first attempt at showing the distribution of utility in the present human population. There's a drop of real world data in the post Vegetarianism And Negative Utility: world populations of common livestock animals. For future work, I hope to improve on the population utility distribution by using either better data or life expectancy information. Also, if I ever find or create a classifyication of animals by their capacity to experience utility (see below), I could extend this to the the present population of all individuals, human or otherwise. I hope to compare life satisfaction data to other available statistics including GDP, HDI, GNH, HPI, etc. Finally, I hope to combine this data with data regarding Surplus Money, climate change, and perhaps other topics to make recommendations on both societal and individual levels.
Another topic I'd like to cover is the physiological basis of utility. The post Vegetarianism And Negative Utility touches on this topic, but only slightly. I hope to make what might be the first ever attempt at classifying animals by their capacity to experience utility. From initial conversations with neuroethologists, this topic has not yet been covered. I also will likely include a discussion of brain imaging, which is becoming my primary area of research. This discussion will likely include an evaluation of existing techniques and ideas for research projects, some of which I may actually be able to perform.
I would also like to cover utilitarianism and finance. A few posts which touch on some of what I have in mind include: The discussion of risk adapted from decision making in investing in Handling Uncertainty; the concept of surplus money defined briefly in the post Surplus Money; and the section on "Critics vs. Warren Buffett" in the post Modeling Choice With Utility Curves. For future work, I hope to cover both practical and theoretical aspects of handling money from a utilitarian perspective.
Finally, there currently is one post on my personal interpretation of utilitarianism: Proximity, Uncertainty, And Effort, which discusses how to balance our preference for helping those closest to us with utilitarianism's assertion that we should consider everyone's interests equally, regardless of how close they are to us. There may be a few more posts on this general topic, such as about rights and fairness.
This page navigates you through all the content on the site so you don't have to scan through all the posts looking for what you want. It will be updated as new content gets added, so you might want to avoid quoting it, since the wordings are liable to change.
There are a few posts about the blog itself. The very first post, Hello, world, gives an intro to this blog: what it's about, and what I'm trying to do with it. Links, Links, Links gives a description of the links provided on the column on the right side of the screen.
I hope to host many open problems in utilitarianism, where we can use this forum to address important matters. There are currently two. Utility Cost Of Greenhouse Gas proposes the problem of how much utility one would have to get from greenhouse gas emissions to justify doing so, given the realities of climate change. Utility Taxonomy proposes the problem of classifying species by their capacity to experience utility. Also, the post Surplus Money features a discussion of what organization is the most worthy recipient of our donations. Other topics I hope to get to include livestock treatment.
I have a few posts on the mathematics of utilitarianism which reads like a textbook. The first post, Utility Curves, introduces the topic and discusses it for single individuals. Next, Utility Curves For Multiple Individuals, extends this to handle more than one person. Total Lifetime Utility gives a more rigorous treatment of total utility across an individual's lifetime and combines this with the work on multiple individuals to provide a representation of "the total utility of the entire universe (as we know it)". Modeling Choice With Utility Curves introduces the use of utility curves in deciding what choice to make. Finally, Handling Uncertainty discusses how to handle choices whose resulting utility is unknown. This includes a mathematical treatment using probability theory and a discussion of risk adapted from decision making in investing. As for future work, I eventually hope to write on the application of optimization techniques.
There is also a discussion of the existing body of work on utilitarianism and related topics. The main post on this topic is Utilitarianism In Academia. The post Utility Measures discusses various existing statistics which attempt to quantify utility on both individual and collective levels. The post Happiness Economics: Recommended Reading takes a closer look at the great work going on in a field called happiness economics. The post Reviewing The Stern Review offers select quotes from the Stern Review Report on the Economics of Climate Change to facilitate reviewing the document. There should be more coming on existing work coming. I especially hope to write more on the neuroscience side as I continue to learn more about it.
There is a small but growing amount of content on personal ethics, i.e. what, from a utilitarian perspective, we should do. The post Vegetarianism And Negative Utility includes a good initial discussion on the ethics of meat consumption. The post Surplus Money discusses what money we should donate to charity and which charity we should donate to. There is also a brief mention of an Oxfam America Matching Campaign that ended on October 2, 2006.
There are several posts on the analysis of real world data. The post Total Human Earth Utility provides a very approximate estimate for how much utility humanity can expect on Earth until the sun no longer supports it. The post Utility Cost Of Greenhouse Gas proposes the problem of how much utility one would have to get from greenhouse gas emissions to justify doing so, given the realities of climate change. The post Population Utility Distribution gives a first attempt at showing the distribution of utility in the present human population. There's a drop of real world data in the post Vegetarianism And Negative Utility: world populations of common livestock animals. For future work, I hope to improve on the population utility distribution by using either better data or life expectancy information. Also, if I ever find or create a classifyication of animals by their capacity to experience utility (see below), I could extend this to the the present population of all individuals, human or otherwise. I hope to compare life satisfaction data to other available statistics including GDP, HDI, GNH, HPI, etc. Finally, I hope to combine this data with data regarding Surplus Money, climate change, and perhaps other topics to make recommendations on both societal and individual levels.
Another topic I'd like to cover is the physiological basis of utility. The post Vegetarianism And Negative Utility touches on this topic, but only slightly. I hope to make what might be the first ever attempt at classifying animals by their capacity to experience utility. From initial conversations with neuroethologists, this topic has not yet been covered. I also will likely include a discussion of brain imaging, which is becoming my primary area of research. This discussion will likely include an evaluation of existing techniques and ideas for research projects, some of which I may actually be able to perform.
I would also like to cover utilitarianism and finance. A few posts which touch on some of what I have in mind include: The discussion of risk adapted from decision making in investing in Handling Uncertainty; the concept of surplus money defined briefly in the post Surplus Money; and the section on "Critics vs. Warren Buffett" in the post Modeling Choice With Utility Curves. For future work, I hope to cover both practical and theoretical aspects of handling money from a utilitarian perspective.
Finally, there currently is one post on my personal interpretation of utilitarianism: Proximity, Uncertainty, And Effort, which discusses how to balance our preference for helping those closest to us with utilitarianism's assertion that we should consider everyone's interests equally, regardless of how close they are to us. There may be a few more posts on this general topic, such as about rights and fairness.
posted by Seth Baum at 11:13 AM
1 Comments:
Colin Allen has a good review of animal sentience in Pain: New essays. Yew-Kwang Ng has written an interesting paper, Towards welfare biology (Biology and Philosophy 10: 255-285, 1995), in which he argues from Darwinian principles that wild animals have negative utility. My slightly more optimistic guess is that animals (including humans) have utilities close to zero. Neurotransmitters are energetically costly, so we should have evolved the smallest hedonic capacity needed to motivate fitness-maximizing behaviors. Hopefully we’re on the positive side of zero. But rather than focus our efforts on marginally increasing possibly positive utilities, a long-term utilitarian goal would be to increase hedonic capacity.
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