#utilitarian

When we say that humans have a “right” not to be used for these purposes, this means simply that the interest of humans in not being used as non-consenting subjects in experiments will be protected even if the consequences of using them would be very beneficial for the rest of us. The question, then, is why do we think that it is morally acceptable to use nonhumans in experiments but not to use humans? Vivisection, Part Two: The Moral Justification of Vivisection | Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach http://bit.ly/oREDH0 ↗

— Gary L. Francione

#moral-justification #utilitarianism #vivisection #experience

Art is the most beautiful deception of all. And although people try to incorporate the everyday events of life in it, we must hope that it will remain a deception lest it become a utilitarian thing, sad as a factory. ↗

— Claude Debussy

#art #beautiful #become #deception #events

I am a bike enthusiast; there's a certain amount of romance to bikes. They're both beautiful and utilitarian. ↗

— Dave Eggers

#amount #beautiful #bike #bikes #both

Universities are the cathedrals of the modern age. They shouldn't have to justify their existence by utilitarian criteria. ↗

— David Lodge

#cathedrals #criteria #existence #justify #modern

But on a utilitarian level, I realize that to try to accomplish the greatest good for the greatest number of people, sometimes we have to become salesmen for what we believe, and part of being a salesman is being effective. ↗

— Moby

#become #being #believe #effective #good

In other words, knowledge of the external world begins with an immediate utilisation of things, whereas knowledge of self is stopped by this purely practical and utilitarian contact. ↗

— Jean Piaget

#contact #external #external world #immediate #in other words

To be a utilitarian means that you judge actions as right or wrong in accordance with whether they have good consequences. So you try to do what will have the best consequences for all of those affected. ↗

— Peter Singer

#actions #affected #best #consequences #good

But if all maximizing models are really arguing is that “people will always seek to maximize something,” then they obviously can’t predict anything, which means employing them can hardly be said to make anthropology more scientific. All they really add to analysis is a set of assumptions about human nature. The assumption, most of all, that no one ever does anything primarily out of concern for others; that whatever one does, one is only trying to get something out of it for oneself. In common English, there is a word for this attitude. It’s called “cynicism.” Most of us try to avoid people who take it too much to heart. In economics, apparently, they call it “science. ↗

— David Graeber

#pomo #rational-choice-theory #utilitarianism #attitude

If we reason that we want happiness for others, not for ourselves, then we ought justly to be suspected of failing to recognize human nature for what it is and of wishing to turn men into machines. ↗

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

#men

In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected." (Frauds on the Fairies, 1853) ↗

— Charles Dickens

#utilitarianism #age