General utility 2.0

October 5, 2010 — Poor Richard



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Towards a science of happiness and well-being
Stephen J Gould seems to have spoken for many when he proposed that science and religion, or the domains of “is” and “ought”, are “non-overlapping magisteria,” and opined that “science and religion do not glower at each other…but interdigitate in patterns of complex fingering, and at every fractal scale of self-similarity.”

I disagree.

Whether the “magisteria” overlap or not is the question, not the answer. In my opinion they do overlap in the following way: religion, philosophy and science widely overlap in the domain of 1) asking questions about the world, and 2) interpreting evidence—although each may specialize in the types of questions it chooses to ask and the kinds of evidence it bothers to interpret.

However, they DO NOT overlap or even interdigitate when it comes to 3) the scientific method and the CRAFT of gathering and validating evidence (regardless of whether the questions are about atoms, evolution, or out-of-body experiences) because there is but one valid magisteria of evidence. I am highly skeptical of claims that there are “non-overlapping magisteria,” where it comes to evidence per se. Thousands of years of faith and anecdote supporting the virgin birth, the geocentirc universe, etc. didn’t make those magesteria or those beliefs valid.

Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape

Jon Stewart Interviews Sam Harris about The Moral Landscape

Sam Harris, posted with vodpod

Many ask, “Is there good without God?” It is just as reasonable to ask if there can be anygood with god if gods are a delusion. Are we satisfied with people doing good for the wrong reasons? Its certainly not ideal. Doing anything for a wrong (or unenlightened) reason increases the risk of bad side effects and unintended consequences, including but not limited to the consequence of reinforcing the fallacies behind the original motivation.

The branch of moral philosophy known as consequentialism emphasizes the results or consequences of any action or rule over the importance of intentions or motives. What I like about consequentialism in general is a concern about unintended consequences because, after all, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” It also accords with the ancient aphorism that “By their fruits [i.e. results—not words, reputations, intentions, etc.] shall ye know them.” Results alone may not be sufficient to justify actions, but neither are intentions. Of the two, results may well be the more germane; and they are certainly the more easily quantifiable.

Wikipedia says:

Consequentialism refers to those moral theories which hold that the consequences of one’s conduct are the true basis for any judgment about the morality of that conduct. Thus, from a consequentialist standpoint, a morally right act (or ommission) is one that will produce a good outcome, or consequence. This view is often expressed as the aphorism “The ends justify the means”.

Consequentialism is usually understood as distinct from deontology, in that deontology derives the rightness or wrongness of one’s conduct from the character of the behaviour itself rather than the outcomes of the conduct. It is also distinguished from virtue ethics, which focuses on the character of the agent rather than on the nature or consequences of the act (or omission) itself.

Obviously the glaring problem with that definition is “The ends justify the means.” We have a strong, intuitive, negative reaction to that. What our knee-jerk reaction fails to appreciate is that means, regardless of any ends, have empirically deterministic consequences of their own and can be judged accordingly.

The saying “the ends justify the means” is often used to justify means which are actually ends in themselves or which serve ends that are not explicitly stated by those who employ them. Or the stated ends fail to include various “externalities” or side-effects, by-products, or other consequences which were either unintended or unjustified.

I can’t stop the concept of consequentialism from being applied euphemistically and disingenuously to provide cover for special interests and antisocial policies, but that is in direct contradiction to the aim of empirically and transparently accounting for all consequences—including side-effects and so-called externalities.

Consequentialism does not hold that results/ends matter more than methods/means but that consequences matter more than intentions. Methods and means are susceptible to empirical evaluation as to their consequences (both direct and incidental) and fitness for any given purpose, but intentions are not.

As goodgraydrab put it in the original thread, “the point [is] that empirical evidence can significantly alter the notion of support for “justification” and “means,” while at the same time examining the validity and motivation for the “ends,” over unfounded supernatural biblical belief and political greed.”

We often have a hard time really defining and justifying our “ends” in an explicit way. One goal often contradicts another goal, even for a single individual. That is why we usually say the ends don’t justify the means. What this really means is that certain implicit goals, such as civil society (the rule of law), are considered axiomatic and must not be contradicted by the means used to achieve other goals, such as accumulation of personal wealth. The means for achieving one goal may violate or defeat achieving other, perhaps even more important, goals. Means are properly justified (or judged) by all their consequences, intended or unintended; or to put it another way, by their effectiveness and by all their side effects. In consequentialism, no “externalities” can be sanctioned. To recognize one set of consequences and ignore others would be outright hypocrisy or subterfuge, not consequentialism.

The harder philosophical issue may be judging the merit of the targeted “ends” or goals.

Goals can be classed as individual or collective. There is a natural tension between these two categories that can be difficult to resolve even by concepts of enlightened self interest and maximum utility. Human beings would not be well served by the deterministic rules of ant society. A model of maximum utility that includes human beings requires a certain amount of capability, freedom, and dignity, as well as some amount of inequality or disequilibrium. But when, where, why, and how much?

Utility

That is where a particular version of consequentialism, utility theory or utilitarianism, comes in.

Both the so called “utility function” and utilitarianism have their critics and their historical baggage. In philosophy, economics, and social science they have been formulated in overly vague, reductive, or simplistic ways often rife with primitive, pre-scientific assumptions and externalities. That doesn’t matter to me because I assume a priori that any philosophical school has historical baggage and needs to be reformulated to conform with a modern empirical framework. Henceforth I will refer to that scientific framework as General Utility 2.0. I call it “general” utility to distinguish it from prior species of utility theory which I characterize as narrow or “special” versions of utility.

In theory, the General Utility 2.0 framework is a multi-dimensional matrix of all variables that impact the well-being and flourishing of human life and everything on which it depends, including the entire biosphere.

Sam Harris is a neuroscientist, but I don’t think he is saying that well-being is only a matter of mental states. Things like organic health, economic well-being, and ecological fitness are important, too. That’s why I’d love to read Harris’ take on physical quality-of-life-metrics and the so called “capability approach” of Sen and Nussbaum. It seems like all that would dovetail nicely.

I also hope that an empirical approach to ethics can breathe new life and scope into consequentialism and the utility function. In my opinion, “what is” and “what ought” are on a collision course, and Sam Harris may be one of the great early pioneers of that convergence.

Objections to utility

I already discussed the objection to “ends justifying means” but here is a particular example I recently came across:

“Utilitarianism cannot protect the rights of minorities if the goal is the greatest good for the greatest number. Americans in the eighteenth century could justify slavery on the basis that it provided a good consequence for a majority of Americans. Certainly the majority benefited from cheap slave labor even though the lives of African slaves were much worse.”

Many objections to utility have to do with the difficulties in weighting, aggregating, and computing individual vs collective well-being. Some methods can produce “repugnant” results for individuals and minorities, and even for the whole population in some instances. These are mostly methodological issues.

The biosphere and well-being of future generations must also be taken into account in Utility 2.0, and the means for achieving maximum utility must conform with certain axiomatic constraints such as justice and allowance for prior conditions. For example, if maximum utility prescribes a population smaller than presently exists, the population goal must be achieved via natural attrition rather than mass extermination.

Further, the goal of Utility 2.0 is not to force people autocratically into conformity with some computed state of maximum utility. The idea is make information about the consequences of possible choices available in the expectation that such information will affect the choosers. The Utility 2.0 model would allow the results of changes to any variable to be distributed across all knowledge domains and the consequences estimated.

As goodgraydrab put it so well in the original thread, “the point [is] that empirical evidence can significantly alter the notion of support for “justification” and “means,” while at the same time examining the validity and motivation for the “ends,” over unfounded supernatural biblical belief and political greed.”

Since in the end people still have to decide how to weight variables and how apply Utility 2.0 information, the results of maximizing utility should not violently contradict generic, intuitive attitudes towards well-being. The hope is more that such empirical knowledge would SHAPE such attitudes for the better.

The following is little more than a brainstorming effort, but I think its helpful to have some concrete iteration of an idea to work from.

=Utility 2.0 Framework=

A CRUDE TAXONOMY OF WELL-BEING/FLOURISHING/UTILITY/QUALITY OF LIFE

I. Happiness (mental/emotional state)

A. oxytocin B. amygdala excitation (fMRI) C. genital arousal D. full belly E. reinforcement (“Well done, Joe”) F. homeostasis G. absence of stress or other happiness inhibitors H. Whatever–you get the idea

II. Health & longevity (many dimensions/components)

III. Safety/security (ditto)

IV. Freedom/constraint/capability (ditto)

V. Information

A. Education (Body of Knowledge)

1. What is

2. Quality assurance, confidence

B. Self-knowledge

1. implicit associations and biases 2. conscious values/beliefs 3. strengths and weaknesses 4. habits 5. effective/ineffective reinforcement history 6. whatever

C. Info about consequences of alternative choices, thoughts, or behaviors

1. short-term consequences 2. long-term consequences

VI. Social matrix factors affecting well-being

A. Status (wealth, power, rank, position, fame, celebrity, etc.)

B. Family

C. Community

D. Employment (job satisfaction, working conditions, culture, co-worker relations, etc.)

E. Other support networks

VII. Standard of living factors: market basket, assets, disposable income, etc.

VIII. Other quality of life factors: creative outlets, nature, recreation, etc.

IX. Contribution to flourishing of others (including ecosystem impacts)

It is important to note that various instruments already exist to measure nearly all the parameters in the above table and thus create well-being “profiles” of individuals and groups.

The next level of developing the Utility 2.0 model would be to correlate every species of data in the profile so that a change in one variable would be reflected in any others where a relationship was known. So the Utility 2.0 framework is a model of both data and relational algorithms.

Poor Richard

Related Articles

'''THE NEW SCIENCE OF MORALITY [7.23.10] An Edge Conference'''



Sam Harris, Author, Neuroscientist (Huffington Post) Sam Harris (Wikipedia)  Toward a Science of Morality (Huffington Post  May 7, 2010)  Jon Stewart Interviews Sam Harris

2010/07/28) Can science answer moral questions? (openparachute.wordpress.com, 2010/03/25)

Sam Harris at TED Conference

Is and ought (openparachute.wordpress.com, 2010/07/28)

Arrested moral development. (openparachute.wordpress.com, 2010/10/04)

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Quality of Life (Wikipedia)''' '''

The term quality of life is used to evaluate the general well-being of individuals and societies. The term is used in a wide range of contexts, including the fields of international development, healthcare, and politics. Quality of life should not be confused with the concept of standard of living, which is based primarily on income. Instead, standard indicators of the quality of life include not only wealth and employment, but also the built environment, physical and mental health, education, recreation and leisure time, and social belonging.[1]|undefined

Quantitative measurement

Unlike per capita GDP or standard of living, both of which can be measured in financial terms, it is harder to make objective or long-term measurements of the quality of life experienced by nations or other groups of people. Researchers have begun in recent times to distinguish two aspects of personal well-being: Emotional well-being, in which respondents are asked about the quality of their everyday emotional experiences—the frequency and intensity of their experiences of, for example, joy, stress, sadness, anger, and affection— and life evaluation, in which respondents are asked to think about their life in general and evaluate it against a scale.[6]|undefined Such and other systems and scales of measurement have been in use for some time.

Human Development Index
Main article: Human Development Index

Perhaps the most commonly used international measure of development is the Human Development Index (HDI), which combines measures of life expectancy, education, and standard of living, in an attempt to quantify the options available to individuals within a given society. The HDI is used by the United Nations Development Programme in their Human Development Report.

Other measures
The Physical Quality of Life Index (PQLI) is a measure developed by sociologist Morris David Morris in the 1970s, based on basic literacy, infant mortality, and life expectancy. Although not as complex as other measures, and now essentially replaced by the Human Development Index, the PQLI is notable for Morris’s attempt to show a “less fatalistic pessimistic picture” by focussing on three areas where global quality of life was generally improving at the time, and ignoring Gross National Product and other possible indicators that were not improving.[7]|undefined

The Happy Planet Index, introduced in 2006, is unique among quality of life measures in that, in addition to standard determinants of well-being, it uses each country’s ecological footprint as an indicator. As a result, European and North American nations do not dominate this measure. The 2009 list is instead topped by Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, and Jamaica.[8]|undefined

Gallup researchers trying to find the world’s happiest countries found Denmark to be top of the list.[1]

A 2010 study by two Princeton University professors looked at 1,000 randomly selected U.S. residents over an extended period. It concludes that their life evaluations, that is their considered evaluations of their life against a stated scale of one to ten, rise steadily with income. On the other hand, their reported quality of emotional daily experience (their reports of experiences of joy, affection, stress, sadness, or anger) levels off after a certain income level. The quality of their everyday experiences did not improve beyond approximately $75,000 a year. Below this income, respondents reported decreasing happiness and increasing sadness and stress; the pain of life’s misfortunes, including disease, divorce, and being alone, is exacerbated by poverty. Further income above $75,000, on the other hand, does not lead to more experiences of happiness nor to further relief of unhappiness or stress.[9]|undefined

The Well-being & Progress Index (WIP) introduced by Luca D’Acci (2010), includes several aspects of well-being and progress, like human rights, economic well-being, equality, education, research, quality of urban environment, ecological behaviours, subjective well-being, longevity, and violent crime. (Social Indicators Research, oct.2010, Springer)

Liveability
The term quality of life is also used by politicians and economists to measure the liveability of a given city or nation. Two widely known measures of liveability are the Economist Intelligence Unit’s quality-of-life index and Mercer’s Quality of Living Reports. These two measures calculate the liveability of countries and cities around the world, respectively, through a combination of subjective life-satisfaction surveys and objective determinants of quality of life such as divorce rates, safety, and infrastructure. Such measures relate more broadly to the population of a city, state, or country, not to the individual level.

Healthcare
Main article: Quality of life (healthcare)

Within the field of healthcare, quality of life is often regarded in terms of how it is negatively affected, on an individual level, a debilitating illness that is not life-threatening, life-threatening illness that is not terminal, terminal illness, the predictable, natural decline in the health of an elder, an unforeseen mental/physical decline of a loved one, chronic, end-stage disease processes. Researchers at the University of Toronto’s Quality of Life Research Unit define quality of life as “The degree to which a person enjoys the important possibilities of his or her life” (UofT). Their Quality of Life Model is based on the categories “being”, “belonging”, and “becoming”, respectively who one is, how one is connected to one’s environment, and whether one achieves one’s personal goals, hopes, and aspirations.[13]|undefined[14]|undefined

Contents
[hide]


 * 1 What capabilities matter?
 * 2 Can capabilities be measured?
 * 3 References
 * 4 External links
 * }

What capabilities matter?
Nussbaum (2000) frames these basic principles in terms of ten capabilities, i.e. real opportunities based on personal and social circumstance. This approach contrasts with a common view that sees development purely in terms of GNP growth, and poverty purely as income-deprivation. It has been highly influential in development policy where it has shaped the evolution of the human development index HDI has been much discussed in philosophy and is increasingly influential in a range of social sciences.

The ten capabilities Nussbaum argues should be supported by all democracies are:


 * 1) Life. Being able to live to the end of a human life of normal length; not dying prematurely, or before one’s life is so reduced as to be not worth living.
 * 2) Bodily Health. Being able to have good health, including reproductive health; to be adequately nourished; to have adequate shelter.
 * 3) Bodily Integrity. Being able to move freely from place to place; to be secure against violent assault, including sexual assault and domestic violence; having opportunities for sexual satisfaction and for choice in matters of reproduction.
 * 4) Senses, Imagination, and Thought. Being able to use the senses, to imagine, think, and reason—and to do these things in a “truly human” way, a way informed and cultivated by an adequate education, including, but by no means limited to, literacy and basic mathematical and scientific training. Being able to use imagination and thought in connection with experiencing and producing works and events of one’s own choice, religious, literary, musical, and so forth. Being able to use one’s mind in ways protected by guarantees of freedom of expression with respect to both political and artistic speech, and freedom of religious exercise. Being able to have pleasurable experiences and to avoid non-beneficial pain.
 * 5) Emotions. Being able to have attachments to things and people outside ourselves; to love those who love and care for us, to grieve at their absence; in general, to love, to grieve, to experience longing, gratitude, and justified anger. Not having one’s emotional development blighted by fear and anxiety. (Supporting this capability means supporting forms of human association that can be shown to be crucial in their development.)
 * 6) Practical Reason. Being able to form a conception of the good and to engage in critical reflection about the planning of one’s life. (This entails protection for the liberty of conscience and religious observance.)
 * 7) Affiliation.
 * 8) Being able to live with and toward others, to recognize and show concern for other humans, to engage in various forms of social interaction; to be able to imagine the situation of another. (Protecting this capability means protecting institutions that constitute and nourish such forms of affiliation, and also protecting the freedom of assembly and political speech.)
 * 9) Having the social bases of self-respect and non-humiliation; being able to be treated as a dignified being whose worth is equal to that of others. This entails provisions of non-discrimination on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity, caste, religion, national origin and species.
 * 10) Other Species. Being able to live with concern for and in relation to animals, plants, and the world of nature.
 * 11) Play. Being able to laugh, to play, to enjoy recreational activities.
 * 12) Control over one’s Environment.
 * 13) Political. Being able to participate effectively in political choices that govern one’s life; having the right of political participation, protections of free speech and association.
 * 14) Material. Being able to hold property (both land and movable goods), and having property rights on an equal basis with others; having the right to seek employment on an equal basis with others; having the freedom from unwarranted search and seizure. In work, being able to work as a human, exercising practical reason and entering into meaningful relationships of mutual recognition with other workers.

The approach was first fully articulated in Sen (1985) and discussed in Sen and Nussbaum (1993). Applications to development are discussed in Sen (1999), Nussbaum (2000), and Clark (2002, 2005) and are now numerous to the point where the capabilities approach is widely accepted as a paradigm in development.

Can capabilities be measured?
Applications to welfare economics and health in high income countries are now also beginning to emerge, Anand, Hunter and Smith (2005). A key dilemma for the capabilities approach has been how to measure what people could do, as opposed to what they actually do, and this has been the subject of a large international research project. Bringing together researchers from economics, philosophy and psychology, their work demonstrates that capability indicators can be found in standard data-sets and more significantly that it is possible to develop new survey instruments which operationalise Nussbaum’s list above. The project solves an important problem for the approach and will be of use to any researchers interested in measuring multi-dimensional aspects of poverty or quality of life. The main capabilities measurement instrument has over 60 indicators, is being used by a number of research groups and is discussed further in Anand et al. (2009) and Anand, Santos and Smith (2009).

Martha Nussbaum, The Capability approach
During the 1980s Nussbaum began a collaboration with economist Amartya Sen on issues of development and ethics which culminated in The Quality of Life, published in 1993 by Oxford University Press. Together with Sen and a group of younger scholars, Nussbaum founded the Human Development and Capability Association in 2003. With Sen, she promoted the “capabilities approach” to development, which views capabilities (“substantial freedoms”, such as the ability to live to old age, engage in economic transactions, or participate in political activities) as the constitutive parts of development, and poverty as capability-deprivation. This contrasts with traditional utilitarian views that see development purely in terms of economic growth, and poverty purely as income-deprivation. It is also universalist, and therefore contrasts with relativist approaches to development. Much of the work is presented from an Aristotelian perspective.

Nussbaum furthered the capabilities approach in Frontiers of Justice (2006), to expand upon social contractarian explanations of justice, as developed most extensively by John Rawls‘ in his Theory of Justice, Political Liberalism, The Law of Peoples, and related works. Nussbaum argues that standard social contractarianism, while far better than utilitarianism in providing a satisfactory framework for justice, relies on the belief and assumption that cooperation is pursued for the purpose of securing mutual advantage. Views deriving from the classical tradition of the social contract, she argues, have great difficulty dealing with issues of basic justice and substantial freedom in situations where there are great asymmetries of power between the parties. As such, Nussbaum argues that the procedural justice-based approach of contractarianism therefore fails to address areas in which symmetrical advantage does not exist, namely, in the context of justice for the disabled, transnational justice, and justice for non-human animals (“the three frontiers”).

Noting that Rawls himself acknowledged the failure of his theory of justice to comprehensively address these three frontiers, Nussbaum claims that Rawls’s attempt to expand his theory to address one of these areas — transnational justice — is “ultimately unsatisfying” because he fails to follow through with the essential elements developed in A Theory of Justice, namely, by relaxing some of the key assumptions about the parties to the original contract. Nussbaum argues that the contractarian approach cannot explain justice in the absence of free, equal and independent parties in an original position in which “all have something with which to bargain and none have too much” (with reference to Rousseau and Hume), concluding that the procedural perspective alone cannot provide an adequate theory of justice.

To address this perceived problem, Nussbaum introduces the capabilities approach, an outcome-oriented view that seeks to determine what basic principles, and adequate measure thereof, would fulfill a life of human dignity. She frames these basic principles in terms of ten capabilities, i.e. real opportunities based on personal and social circumstance. Nussbaum posits that justice demands the pursuit, for all citizens, of a minimum threshold of these ten capabilities. She recently developed the idea of the threshold, with reference to constitutional law, in her Foreword to the 2007 Supreme Court issue of the Harvard Law Review, “Constitutions and Capabilities: ‘Perception’ Against Lofty Formalism,” which will ultimately appear in revised form as a book from Harvard University Press. Her book, Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America’s Tradition of Religious Equality (Basic Books 2008) explores the constitutional requirements of justice in the area of religious liberty. Nussbaum’s major current work-in-progress, projected in the final chapter of Frontiers of Justice, is a book on the moral psychology of the capabilities approach, which will bring together her work on the emotions with the analysis of social justice. This book is under contract to Cambridge University Press. The book entitled The Cosmopolitan Tradition is no longer under contract to Yale University Press

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=The Capability Approach: a theoretical survey=

Author: Ingrid Robeynsa

Abstract
This paper aims to present a theoretical survey of the capability approach in an interdisciplinary and accessible way. It focuses on the main conceptual and theoretical aspects of the capability approach, as developed by Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum, and others. The capability approach is a broad normative framework for the evaluation and assessment of individual well-being and social arrangements, the design of policies, and proposals about social change in society. Its main characteristics are its highly interdisciplinary character, and the focus on the plural or multidimensional aspects of well-being. The approach highlights the difference between means and ends, and between substantive freedoms (capabilities) and outcomes (achieved functionings). _______________________________________________________

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=Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach to Education: A Critical Exploration=


 * 1) Madoka Saito

Article first published online: 6 MAY 2003

DOI: 10.1111/1467-9752.3701002

Issue



Journal of Philosophy of Education
Volume 37, Issue 1, pages 17–33, February 2003

Saito, M. (2003), Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach to Education: A Critical Exploration. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 37: 17–33. doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.3701002

This article examines the underexplored relationship between Amartya Sen’s ‘capability approach’ to human well-being and education. Two roles which education might play in relation to the development of capacities are given particular attention: (i) the enhancement of capacities and opportunities and (ii) the development of judgement in relation to the appropriate exercise of capacities.

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http://books.google.com/books?id=WdX-E6dzA0wC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA3#v=onepage&q&f=false

Capability and Well-Being
A Sen – Development: Challenges for development, 2000 – books.google.com … issues as objectivity) to the motivational, and it is not obvious that for substantive political and social philosophy it is … of weights (as I have tried to discuss in the context of the use of the capability approach52), even the general rationale for using such an approach may be …

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felicific_calculus

The felicific calculus is an algorithm formulated by utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham for calculating the degree or amount of pleasure that a specific action is likely to cause. Bentham, an ethical hedonist, believed the moral rightness or wrongness of an action to be a function of the amount of pleasure or pain that it produced. The felicific calculus could, in principle at least, determine the moral status of any considered act. The algorithm is also known as the utility calculus, the hedonistic calculus and the hedonic calculus.

Variables, or vectors, of the pleasures and pains included in this calculation, which Bentham called “elements” or “dimensions“, were:[clarification needed]


 * 1) Intensity: How strong is the pleasure?
 * 2) Duration : How long will the pleasure last?
 * 3) Certainty or uncertainty : How likely or unlikely is it that the pleasure will occur?
 * 4) Propinquity or remoteness : How soon will the pleasure occur?
 * 5) Fecundity : The probability that the action will be followed by sensations of the same kind.
 * 6) Purity : The probability that it will not be followed by sensations of the opposite kind.
 * 7) Extent : How many people will be affected?

Bentham’s instructions

* Begin with any one person of those whose interests seem most immediately to be affected by it: and take an account, o Of the value of each distinguishable pleasure which appears to be produced by it in the first instance. o Of the value of each pain which appears to be produced by it in the first instance. o Of the value of each pleasure which appears to be produced by it after the first. This constitutes the fecundity of the first pleasure and the impurity of the first pain. o Of the value of each pain which appears to be produced by it after the first. This constitutes the fecundity of the first pain, and the impurity of the first pleasure.

* Sum up all the values of all the pleasures on the one side, and those of all the pains on the other. The balance, if it be on the side of pleasure, will give the good tendency of the act upon the whole, with respect to the interests of that individual person; if on the side of pain, the bad tendency of it upon the whole.

* Take an account of the number of persons whose interests appear to be concerned; and repeat the above process with respect to each. Sum up the numbers expressive of the degrees of good tendency, which the act has, with respect to each individual, in regard to whom the tendency of it is good upon the whole. Do this again with respect to each individual, in regard to whom the tendency of it is bad upon the whole. Take the balance which if on the side of pleasure, will give the general good tendency of the act, with respect to the total number or community of individuals concerned; if on the side of pain, the general evil tendency, with respect to the same community

Research




Science has already begun connecting concepts like sadness with physical structure in the brain

Nobel prize winner Eric Kandel and researcher Cynthia Fu describe their findings that depression can be diagnosed very accurately just by looking at fMRI brain scans.[13]|undefined This is because researchers have made strides identifying neural correlates for, among other things, emotions. A doctor’s second opinion would still be used, they explain. But the two researchers suggest that mental illnesses may someday be diagnosable by looking at such brain scans alone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_naturalism

Ethical naturalism (also called moral naturalism or naturalistic cognitivistic definism[1]|undefined) is the meta-ethical view which claims that:


 * 1) Ethical sentences express propositions.
 * 2) Some such propositions are true.
 * 3) Those propositions are made true by objective features of the world, independent of human opinion.
 * 4) These moral features of the world can be reduced to some set of non-moral features.

This makes ethical naturalism a definist form of moral realism…

Ethical naturalism does, however, reject the fact-value distinction : it suggests that inquiry into the natural world can increase our moral knowledge in just the same way it increases our scientific knowledge.

Ethical naturalism encompasses any reduction of ethical properties, such as ‘goodness’, to non-ethical properties; there are many different examples of such reductions, and thus many different varieties of ethical naturalism

Harris suggests that values amount to empirical statements about “the flourishing of conscious creatures in a society”. He argues that there are objective answers to moral questions, even if some are difficult or impossible to possess in practice. In this way, he says, science can tell us what to value. Harris adds that we do not demand absolute certainty from predictions in physics so we should not demand that of a science studying morality.[4]|undefined

Garner and Rosen say that a common definition of “natural property” is one “which can be discovered by sense observation or experience, experiment, or through any of the available means of science.” They also say that a good definition of “natural property” is problematic but that “it is only in criticism of naturalism, or in an attempt to distinguish between naturalistic and nonnaturalistic definist theories, that such a concept is needed.”[5]|undefined R. M. Hare also criticised ethical naturalism because of its fallacious definition of the terms ‘good’ or ‘right’ explaining how value-terms being part of our prescriptive moral language are not reducible to descriptive terms: “Value-terms have a special function in language, that of commending; and so they plainly cannot be defined in terms of other words which themselves do not perform this function”[6]|undefined

Moral nihilists maintain that any talk of an objective morality is incoherent and better off using other terms. Proponents of Moral Science like Ronald A. Lindsay have counter-argued that their way of understanding “morality” as a practical enterprise is the way we ought to have understood it in the first place. He holds the position that the alternative seems to be the elaborate philosophical reduction of the word “moral” into a vacuous, useless term[7]|undefined. Lindsay adds that it is important to reclaim the specific word “Morality” because of the connotations it holds with many individuals.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Moral Naturalism”, by James Lenman, first published Thu June 1, 2006; substantive revision Mon August 7, 2006

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(Wikipedia)

Average v total
Total utilitarianism advocates measuring the utility of a population based on the total utility of its members. According to Derek Parfit, this type of utilitarianism falls victim to the Repugnant Conclusion, whereby large numbers of people with very low but non-negative utility values can be seen as a better goal than a population of a less extreme size living in comfort. In other words, according to the theory, it is a moral good to breed more people on the world for as long as total happiness rises.[14]|undefined

Average utilitarianism, on the other hand, advocates measuring the utility of a population based on the average utility of that population. It avoids Parfit’s repugnant conclusion, but causes other problems like the Mere Addition Paradox. For example, bringing a moderately happy person in a very happy world would be seen as an immoral act; aside from this, the theory implies that it would be a moral good to eliminate all people whose happiness is below average, as this would raise the average happiness[15]|undefined

Predicting consequences
Daniel Dennett uses the case of the Three Mile Island accident as an example of the difficulty in calculating happiness.[20]|undefined Was the near-meltdown that occurred at this nuclear power plant a good or a bad thing (according to utilitarianism)? He points out that its long-term effects on nuclear policy would be considered beneficial by many and might outweigh the negative consequences. His conclusion is that it is still too early, 31 years after the event, for utilitarianism to weigh all the evidence and reach a definite conclusion. Utilitarians note that utilitarianism seems to be the unspoken principle used by both advocates and critics of nuclear power.[citation needed] That something cannot be determined at the moment is common in science and frequently resolved with later advancements.

Utilitarians, however, are not required to have perfect knowledge; indeed, certain knowledge of consequences is impossible because consequences are in the unexperienced future. Utilitarians simply try their best to maximise happiness (or other forms of utility) and, to do this, make their best estimates of the consequences. If the consequences of a decision are particularly unclear, it may make sense to follow an ethical rule that promoted the most utility in the past. Utilitarians also note that people trying to further their own interests frequently run into situations in which the consequences of their decisions are very unclear. This does not mean, however, that they are unable to make a decision; much the same applies to utilitarianism.

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=Neurobilogy Research=

Love
The Brain in Love (BigThink.com)

–Fisher, H., et at., “Romantic Love: And fMRI Study of a Neural Mechanism for Mate Choice.”

–Ditzen, B., et al., “Intranasal Oxytocin Increases Positive Communication and Reduces Cortisol Levels During Couple Conflict.”

Ethics/Morality
    Toward a Science of Morality, (Huffington Post, May 7, 2010)   Sam Harris, Author, Neuroscientist

MacArthur Foundation Law & Neuroscience Project''' '''

THE NEW SCIENCE OF MORALITY An Edge Conference

A scientific consensus on human morality (openparachute)

How Neuroscience Is Changing the Law (BigThink.com)

— Langleben, D., “Detection of deception with fMRI: Are we there yet?“

— Jones, O. et al. “The Neural Correlates of Third-Party Punishment.”

The Neurobiology of Evil (BigThink.com)

— Gao, Yu, et al. “Association of Poor Childhood Fear Conditioning and Adult Crime.”

— Davidson, R. et al. “Dysfunction in the Neural Circuitry of Emotion Regulation — A Possible Prelude to Violence.”

— Raine, A., and Yang, Y. “Neural foundations to moral reasoning and antisocial behavior.”

— DeLisi, M., et al. “The Criminology of the Amygdala.”

— Raine, A., et al. “A neurodevelopmental marker for limbic maldevelopment in antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy.”

— Raine, A. “[http://cdp.sagepub.com/content/17/5/323.abstract From genes to brain to antisocial behavior. Current Directions in Psychological Science].”

Neuroethics & Law Blog

Neuroethics: The Neuroscience Revolution, Ethics, and the Law (Santa Clara University)

The Neuroethics Project (The Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics (CCLE))

Religion
The Neural Correlates of Religious and Nonreligious Belief

Harris S, Kaplan JT, Curiel A, Bookheimer SY, Iacoboni M, et al. 2009 PLoS ONE 4(10): e7272.

The Neurological Origins of Religious Belief (BigThink.com)

—Borg, J., et al. “The serotonin system and spiritual experiences.”

—Kapogiannis, D., et al. “Cognitive and neural foundations of religious belief.”

—Urgesi, C., et al. “The Spiritual Brain: Selective Cortical Lesions Modulate Human Self-Transcendence.”

[http://kolber.typepad.com/ethics_law_blog/2010/09/religion-and-visual-attention-also-for-an-eyewitness-andrea-lavazza-and-mario-de-caro.html Religion and visual attention. Also for an eyewitness? (Andrea Lavazza and Mario De Caro)] (kolber.typepad.com)

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