Utilitarianism for a Broken World

Mulgan, Tim

doi:10.1017/s0953820814000338

Cited by 32 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Drawing on my own earlier work (Mulgan 2011(Mulgan , 2014(Mulgan , 2015a(Mulgan , 2015b(Mulgan , 2016a(Mulgan , 2016b(Mulgan , 2017(Mulgan , 2018, I now briefly sketch five key ways that the ethical outlook of a broken future society might differ from our own.…”

Section: Ethics In Broken Futuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Corporate Agency and Possible Futures

Mulgan

2018

J Bus Ethics

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We need an account of corporate agency that is temporally robust-one that will help future people to cope with challenges posed by corporate groups in a range of credible futures. In particular, we need to bequeath moral resources that enable future people to avoid futures dominated by corporate groups that have no regard for human beings. This paper asks how future philosophers living in broken or digital futures might re-imagine contemporary debates about corporate agency. It argues that the only temporally robust account is moralised extreme collectivism, where full moral personhood is accorded (only) to those corporate groups that are reliably disposed to respond appropriately to moral reasons.

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Section: Ethics In Broken Futuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Corporate Agency and Possible Futures

Mulgan

2018

J Bus Ethics

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“…I first outline my approach to utilitarianism (Mulgan 2001(Mulgan , 2006(Mulgan , 2007(Mulgan , 2015d. I begin with a simplified contrast between two strands in the utilitarian tradition.…”

Section: Ideal Moral Outlook Utilitarianismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These are all good utilitarian arguments. But they are also all contingent on two key presuppositions about the distant future: (Rawls 1971, 178) no longer apply, and our affluent way of life is no longer an option (Mulgan 2011(Mulgan , 2014a(Mulgan , 2015a(Mulgan , 2015c(Mulgan , 2015d(Mulgan , 2016a(Mulgan , 2016b. This is a credible future.…”

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confidence: 99%

How should utilitarians think about the future?

Mulgan¹

2018

Ethics and Future Generations

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Utilitarians must think collectively about the future, because many contemporary moral issues require collective responses to avoid possible future harms. But current rule utilitarianism does not accommodate the distant future. Drawing on my recent books Future People and Ethics for a Broken World, I defend a new utilitarianism whose central ethical question is: What moral code should we teach the next generation? This new theory honours utilitarianism's past and provides the flexibility to adapt to the full range of credible futures -from futures broken by climate change to the digital, virtual, and predictable futures produced by various possible technologies. for a Broken World (Acumen/McGill-Queens University Press 2011), and Purpose in the Universe: the moral and metaphysical case for ananthropocentric purposivism (Oxford University Press, 2015). KEY WORDS: utilitarianism, rule utilitarianism, future people, intergenerational justice, broken world, moral imagination, virtual reality Drawing on my recent books Future People and Ethics for a Broken World, I defend a new utilitarianism whose central ethical question is: What moral code should we teach the next generation? I argue that this new theory both honours utilitarianism's past and provides the flexibility to adapt to the full range of credible futures -from futures

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“…They struggle to make sense of the opulent worldview of late-affluent philosophers such as Nozick and Rawls, and the behaviour of affluent citizens like us. 14 The broken world lacks several ubiquitous but often-unacknowledged presuppositions of recent moral and political thought. We naturally assume that future people will be better-off than present people; and that the interests of different generations largely coincide.…”

Section: The Choice and The Broken Worldmentioning

confidence: 99%

Answering to Future People: Responsibility for Climate Change in a Breaking World

Mulgan

2016

J Applied Philosophy

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Our everyday notions of responsibility are often driven by our need to justify ourselves to specific others – especially those we harm, wrong, or otherwise affect. One challenge for contemporary ethics is to extend this interpersonal urgency to our relations with those future people who are harmed or affected by our actions. In this article, I explore our responsibility for climate change by imagining a possible ‘broken future’, damaged by the carbon emissions of previous generations (including ourselves), and then asking what its inhabitants might think of our current behaviour, our moral thinking, and our excuses. In particular, I will focus on a simplified scenario where present people can only avoid a broken future by sacrificing Rawlsian favourable conditions. Suppose we refuse to avoid a broken future, on the grounds that we cannot be expected to make such great sacrifices. If the broken future lacks favourable conditions, will its inhabitants accept our excuses? Will they hold us responsible for things we regard as excusable? If so, should we be guided by their judgements or by our own?

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Utilitarianism for a Broken World

Cited by 32 publications

References 11 publications

Corporate Agency and Possible Futures

Corporate Agency and Possible Futures

How should utilitarians think about the future?

Answering to Future People: Responsibility for Climate Change in a Breaking World

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