{"id":27,"date":"2005-01-15T23:07:31","date_gmt":"2005-01-15T23:07:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/phlogma.com\/?p=27"},"modified":"2006-02-25T14:38:46","modified_gmt":"2006-02-25T22:38:46","slug":"the-place-of-utility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/moral-theory\/the-place-of-utility-27","title":{"rendered":"The place of utility"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>If utility is the ultimate source of moral obligations, utility may be invoked to decide between them when their demands are incompatible. Though the application of the standard may be difficult, it is better than none at all: while in other systems, the moral laws all claiming independent authority, there is no common umpire entitled to interfere between them; their claims to precedence one over another rest on little better than sophistry, and unless determined, as they generally are, by the unacknowledged influence of considerations of utility, afford a free scope for the action of personal desires and partialities. We must remember that only in these cases of conflict between secondary principles is it requisite that first principles should be appealed to. [<a href=\"biblog\/?p=54\"><em>Utilitarianism<\/em><\/a>, Chapter 2]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Mill is edging toward a truth here, but perhaps not the one he intends. No amount of talk about higher, more fundamental first principles, in no matter what sense of \u201cfirst,\u201d\u009d is going to rob utilitarianism of its strategic importance in the moral infrastructure. The error lies in mistaking utility&#8217;s utility, as it were, for something foundational.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If utility is the ultimate source of moral obligations, utility may be invoked to decide between them when their demands are incompatible. Though the application of the standard may be difficult, it is better than none at all: while in other systems, the moral laws all claiming independent authority, there is no common umpire entitled &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/moral-theory\/the-place-of-utility-27\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The place of utility&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,3,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-j-s-mill","category-moral-theory","category-utilitarianism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aporia.net\/phlogma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}