4min chapter

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg cover image

Where philosophy meets the real world (with Peter Singer)

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg

CHAPTER

The Hedonistic Utilitarian's Contribution to Morality

Early in his career as a philosopher if you'd asked me are there objective moral truths I would have said no. RM Hair's position was called universal prescriptivism so he said moral judgments are prescriptions that we prescribe to ourselves how we should act and to others how they should act but we do it under a constraint. That constrained it hair thought means that we end up with a kind of utilitarianism in which we should do what's going to satisfy people's preferences the most. We're putting ourselves in the position of everybody affected by action or even every animal affected by action, taking on their preferences and then doing what we would most want to be if we're in that situation.

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