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    Utilitarianism threatens the meaning of individual lives — Carmelics
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    Utilitarianism threatens the meaning of individual lives

    ConsequentialismPersonal Identity
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Utilitarianism requires agents to treat their own life-narrative as merely instrumental to aggregate welfare, dissolving authorial selfhood.
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    • 2.Meaningful lives require what Korsgaard calls 'practical identity'—a self-conception from which one acts—which impartial maximization systematically undermines.
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    • 3.Bernard Williams's integrity objection shows that when utility demands betraying one's ground projects, it severs the psychological continuity constitutive of a life's meaning.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Narrative theories of meaning (MacIntyre, Ricoeur) hold that a life has meaning only insofar as it exhibits teleological coherence across time toward self-chosen ends.
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    • 2.Utilitarian replaceability—the view that any agent's projects matter only contingently—renders individual life-trajectories perpetually revisable by external calculation.
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    • 3.A life whose defining commitments are permanently hostage to aggregate recalculation cannot possess the narrative unity that constitutes biographical meaning.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Personal projects and partial relationships help give our lives meaning
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    • 2.The demandingness of utilitarianism threatens personal projects and partial relationships
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    Topics

    Personal IdentityConsequentialism

    Connections

    1 topic

    Virtue Ethics2 linked

    Related

    A life whose defining commitments are permanently hostage to aggregate recalcula...Bernard Williams's integrity objection shows that when utility demands betraying...Meaningful lives require what Korsgaard calls 'practical identity'—a self-concep...Narrative theories of meaning (MacIntyre, Ricoeur) hold that a life has meaning ...
    +4 moreShow less
    Personal projects and partial relationships help give our lives meaningThe demandingness of utilitarianism threatens personal projects and partial rela...Utilitarian replaceability—the view that any agent's projects matter only contin...Utilitarianism requires agents to treat their own life-narrative as merely instr...

    Similar

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    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: mill-moral-political
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    Is Mill right that there is no special threat to utilitarianism here? One might wonder whether utilitarianism makes greater demands on agents than other moral theories. Contemporary writers have argued that utilitarianism seems to be potentially very demanding, much more so than commonsense morality. For instance, reformist utilitarians, such as Peter Singer (1972), have argued that utilitarianism entails extensive duties of mutual aid that would call for significant changes in the lifestyles of
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit