Util Framework Cards
Governments can only justify legitimate policies to the public through a
utilitarian framework.
Woller 97 Gary Woller (BYU Professor). “An Overview by Gary Woller.” A Forum on the Role of Environmental Ethics. June 1997. pp. 10.
all public policies entail some redistribution of economic or political resources, such
Moreover, virtually
that one group's gains must come at another group's expense. Consequently, public policies in a
democracy must be justified to the public, and especially to those who pay the costs of those policies. Such justification cannot
simply be assumed a priori by invoking some higher-order moral principle. Appeals to a priori moral principles, such as
public policies inevitably entail trade-offs
environmental preservation, also often fail to acknowledge that
among competing values. Thus since policymakers cannot justify inherent value conflicts
to the public in any philosophical sense, and since public policies inherently imply winners and losers, the
policymakers' duty [is] to the public interest requires them to demonstrate that the redistributive effects and
value trade-offs implied by their polices are somehow to the overall advantage of society.
At the same time, deontologically based ethical systems have severe practical limitations as a basis for public policy. At best, a priori
moral principles provide only general guidance to ethical dilemmas in public affairs and do not themselves suggest appropriate
public policies, and at worst, they create a regimen of regulatory unreasonableness while failing to adequately address the problem
or actually making it worse.
The avoidance of pain is an objective good that ought to be maximized,
requiring utilitarianism.
Nagel 86 Thomas Nagel. “The View From Nowhere.” HUP. 1986. 156-168.
I shall defend the unsurprising claim that sensory pleasure is good and pain bad, no matter whose they are. The point of the
exercise is to see how the pressures of objectification operate in a simple case. Physical pleasure and pain do not usually
depend on activities or desires which themselves raise questions of justification and value. They are just sensory
experiences in relation to which we are fairly passive, but toward which we feel involuntary desire or
aversion. Almost everyone takes the avoidance of his own pain and the promotion of his own
pleasure as subjective reasons for action in a fairly simple way; they are not back up by any further reasons. On the other hand if
someone pursues pain or avoids pleasure, either it as a means to some end or it is backed up
by dark reasons like guilt or sexual masochism. What sort of general value, if any, ought to be assigned to pleasure
and pain when we consider these facts from an objective standpoint?
All questions of value depend upon consequentialist experiences.
Harris 10 Sam Harris (CEO Project Reason; PHD UCLA Neuroscience; BA Stanford Philosophy). “The Moral Landscape: How Science Can
Determine Human Values.” 2010.
Here is my (consequentialist) starting point: all
questions of value (right and wrong, good and evil, etc.) depend upon the
possibility of experiencing such value. Without potential consequences at the level of experience—happiness, suffering,
joy, despair, etc.—all talk of value is empty. Therefore, to say that an act is morally necessary , or evil, or
blameless, is to make (tacit) claims about its consequences in the lives of conscious creatures (whether actual or potential). I
am unaware of any interesting exception to this rule. Needless to say, [For example,] if one is worried about pleasing God or His angels, this
assumes that such invisible entities are conscious (in some sense) and cognizant of human behavior. It also generally assumes [and] that it is
possible to suffer their [his] wrath or enjoy their approval, either in this world or the world to come. Even within religion, therefore,
consequences and conscious states remain the foundation of all values.
Moral value is ultimately an expression of our well-being.
Harris 10 Sam Harris (CEO Project Reason; PHD UCLA Neuroscience; BA Stanford Philosophy). “The Moral Landscape: How Science Can
Determine Human Values.” 2010.
Now that we have consciousness on the table, my further claim is that the concept of “well-being” captures all
that we can intelligibly value. And “morality”—whatever people’s associations with this term happen to be—
really relates to the intentions and behaviors that affect the well-being of conscious
creatures. On this point, religious conceptions of moral law are often put forward as counterexamples: for when asked why it is
important to follow God’s law, many people will cannily say, “for its own sake.” Of course, it is possible to say this, but this seems
neither an honest nor a coherent claim. What if a more powerful God would punish us for eternity for following Yahweh’s law? Would
it then make sense to follow Yahweh’s law “for its own sake”? The inescapable fact is that religious people are as eager to find
happiness and to avoid misery as anyone else: many of them just happen to believe that the most important changes in conscious
experience occur after death (i.e., in heaven or in hell). And while Judaism is sometimes held up as an exception—because it tends
not to focus on the afterlife—the Hebrew Bible makes it absolutely clear that Jews should follow Yahweh’s law out of concern for the
negative consequences of not following it. People who do not believe in God or an afterlife, and yet still think it important to
subscribe to a religious tradition, only believe this because living this way [it]
seems to make some positive
contribution to their well-being or to the well-being of others. 9 Religious notions of
morality, therefore, are not exceptions to our common concern for well-being. And all other
philosophical efforts to describe morality in terms of duty, fairness, justice, or some
other principle that is not explicitly tied to the wellbeing of conscious creatures, draw
upon some conception of well-being in the end.
