#utilitarian

I have a utilitarian approach to dressing; as long as I quite like it and it covers me up, I don't care what it is. ↗

— Jo Brand

#care #covers #dressing #i #like

There is poetry even in prose, in all the great prose which is not merely utilitarian or didactic: there exist poets who write in prose or at least in more or less apparent prose; millions of poets write verses which have no connection with poetry. ↗

— Eugenio Montale

#connection #didactic #even #exist #great

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

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

In my opinion, if, as the result of certain combinations, Kepler's or Newton's discoveries could become known to people in no other way than by sacrificing the lives of one, or ten, or a hundred or more people who were hindering the discovery, or standing as an obstacle in its path, then Newton would have the right, and it would even be his duty... to remove those ten or a hundred people, in order to make his discoveries known to mankind. It by no means follows from this, incidentally, that Newton should have the right to kill anyone he pleases, whomever happens along, or to steal from the market every day. Further, I recall developing in my article the idea that all... well, let's say, the lawgivers and founders of mankind, starting from the most ancient and going on to the Lycurguses, the Solons, the Muhammads, the Napoleons, and so forth, that all of them to a man were criminals, from the fact alone that in giving a new law, they thereby violated the old one, held sacred by society and passed down from their fathers, and they certainly did not stop at shedding blood either, if it happened that blood (sometimes quite innocent and shed valiantly for the ancient law) could help them. ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#genius #greatness #the-ends-justify-the-means #utilitarianism #marketing

One of the main arguments that I make is that although almost everyone accepts that it is morally wrong to inflict “unnecessary” suffering and death on animals, 99% of the suffering and death that we inflict on animals can be justified only by our pleasure, amusement, or convenience. For example, the best justification that we have for killing the billions of nonhumans that we eat every year is that we enjoy the taste of animal flesh and animal products. This is not an acceptable justification if we take seriously, as we purport to, that it is wrong to inflict unnecessary suffering or death on animals, and it illustrates the confused thinking that I characterize as our “moral schizophrenia” when it comes to nonhumans. A follow-up question that I often get is: “What about vivisection? Surely that use of animals is not merely for our pleasure, is it?” Vivisection, Part One: The “Necessity” of Vivisection | Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach http://bit.ly/ol179F ↗

— Gary L. Francione

#ethical #health #justification #moral #personhood

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