Sublime

Sa conclusion fut la suivante: le but ultime de toute législation était le bien du peuple; plus il y a de bien, mieux c’est. Bentham était le père de l’utilitarisme, la doctrine selon laquelle, dans toute prise de décision (légale et personnelle), le but poursuivi devrait être le bénéfice total (utilité) maximum, peu importe l’identité des bénéfici

Singer, an Australian philosopher, popularized the concept of “speciesism,” which he compared to racism and sexism. “All animals are equal,” he asserted, adding, “The basic principle of equality does not require equal or identical  treatment;  it requires equal consideration.” Singer did not actually advocate for legal rights but for expa

People might argue that algorithms will never make important decisions for us, because important decisions usually involve an ethical dimension, and algorithms don’t understand ethics. Yet there is no reason to assume that algorithms won’t be able to outperform the average human even in ethics.

Abe Fields ne se croyait pour les bêtes aucune tendresse spéciale et se sentit donc un peu choqué en entendant cette fille parler du sort de la faune africaine comme de la seule chose qui comptât. Cela blessait son sens moral : dans un monde où soixante pour cent de l'humanité crevaient de faim, au point que le mot « liberté » ne pouvait avoir pour

The best-known systems of normative ethics are the one-receptor systems I described in chapter 6: utilitarianism (which tells us to maximize overall welfare) and deontology (which in its Kantian form tells us to make the rights and autonomy of others paramount).

One other oddly big thing happened to Sam at the beginning of his junior year. Completely out of the blue, a twenty-five-year-old lecturer in philosophy at Oxford University named Will Crouch* reached out and asked to meet with him. Sam never learned how the guy had found him—probably from the writing Sam had been doing on various utilitarian messa

the rule is that the behavior change is unethical if it does not honor any of the population’s motivations, not simply if it doesn’t honor the most obvious one.