Economics Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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| Institutional utilitarianism: Institutional utilitarianism applies the principles of utilitarianism - the ethical theory focused on maximizing overall happiness - to evaluate and design societal institutions and policies. See also Utilitarianism, Institutions, Institutionalization, Society, Economy, Ethics._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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Gerald F. Gaus on Institutional Utilitarianism - Dictionary of Arguments
Gaus I 224 Institutional Utilitarianism/Gaus/Lamont: The move to indirect and institutional utilitarian- ism has breathed new life into utilitarian theory, but at a high price. Under institutional utilitarianism, the theoretical criterion for accepting an institution or policy is straightforward: does it maximize the aggregate utility of the population? The problem arises at the practical level, where the information requirements needed to determine which institutions or policies maximize aggregate utility are almost always too great (Gaus, 1998(1)). For example, consider the question of whether institutional utilitarianism would recommend welfare payments to the poor unemployed. This question would be more easily answered if all people obtained the same amount of welfare from all the goods and services available, and if the amount of welfare obtained from a good declined as more of the good is received (that is, if all people had identical diminishing marginal utility functions). Under these conditions we would have some reason to believe that taking goods from the rich and giving them to the poor would increase overall utility. However, every individual has a different utility function and, of course, nobody knows what these functions are. The informational requirements for determining whether utilitarianism recommends welfare payments seem impossible to meet. Unfortunately, the same situation arises for the full range of policies. This problem is compounded by analogues to the common sense morality objections that plagued earlier versions of utilitarianism. Cf. >Utilitarianism. 1. Gaus, Gerald (1998) 'Why all welfare states (including laissez-fai,æ ones) are unreasonable'. Social Philosophy and Policy 15 (2): 1-33. Lamont, Julian, „Distributive Justice“. In: Gaus, Gerald F. & Kukathas, Chandran 2004. Handbook of Political Theory. SAGE Publications_____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
Gaus I Gerald F. Gaus Chandran Kukathas Handbook of Political Theory London 2004 |
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