Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The belief that the value of a thing or an action is determined by its utility.
- noun The ethical theory proposed by Jeremy Bentham and James Mill that all action should be directed toward achieving the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.
- noun The quality of being utilitarian.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The doctrine that the greatest happiness of the greatest number should be the sole aim of all public action, together with the hedonistic theory of ethics, upon which this doctrine rests.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The doctrine that the greatest happiness of the greatest number should be the end and aim of all social and political institutions.
- noun The doctrine that virtue is founded in utility, or that virtue is defined and enforced by its tendency to promote the highest happiness of the universe.
- noun The doctrine that utility is the sole standard of morality, so that the rectitude of an action is determined by its usefulness.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun philosophy A system of ethics based on the premise that something's value may be measured by its usefulness.
- noun philosophy the theory that action should be directed toward achieving the "greatest happiness for the greatest number of people";
hedonistic universalism .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun doctrine that the useful is the good; especially as elaborated by Jeremy Bentham and James Mill; the aim was said to be the greatest happiness for the greatest number
Etymologies
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Examples
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I learned that utilitarianism is a kind of consequentialism.
Angie McQuaig: How To Hyper-Personalize Education Angie McQuaig 2010
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Recently, my interest in utilitarianism was piqued by a conversation with a philosopher friend, so I took to the web.
Angie McQuaig: How To Hyper-Personalize Education Angie McQuaig 2010
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It's one thing to show that utilitarianism is not good.
Trolleyology and morals Andrew Brown 2010
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I learned that utilitarianism is a kind of consequentialism.
Angie McQuaig: How To Hyper-Personalize Education Angie McQuaig 2010
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Recently, my interest in utilitarianism was piqued by a conversation with a philosopher friend, so I took to the web.
Angie McQuaig: How To Hyper-Personalize Education Angie McQuaig 2010
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On the second account, call it equal-concern utilitarianism, utilitarianism is one way of fleshing out the core intuition Kymlicka believes undergirds every plausible contemporary moral theory: To wit, people matter and (in some sense) matter equally.
Happiness Redux 2005
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And, yes, I know that utilitarianism is not the end all, be all of philosphical morality.
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Step two is: show that utilitarianism is not defeated by objections.
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Such theories are sometimes described as a utilitarianism of rights.
Consequentialism Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter 2006
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The phrase utilitarianism, which came into use as the summary of his teaching, has often been misunderstood and misapplied, and perhaps some excuse was found for the misinterpretation of his meaning in his decision that his dead body should be given up for the purpose of anatomy and not buried in earth to be of service {281} only to the worms.
A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) Justin McCarthy 1898
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