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Utilitarianism is one of the most famous ethical doctrines, based on the ideal of maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. But Utilitarians and their opponents lack a clear scientific and philosophical understanding of its foundations: the measurement and aggregation of utility. This is what The Pursuit of Happiness now offers.
List of contents
- 1: The Pursuit of Happiness: Preview
- Part I: The Utility Concept
- 2: Jeremy Bentham - Philosophical Radical
- 3: Early Utilitarians
- 4: Nineteeth-Century Psychophysics
- 5: Measurement Essentials in a Nutshell
- 6: Skeptics
- 7: Using Chance to Measure Utility
- 8: Harsanyi and Utilitarianism
- Part II: Measurement and Psychophysics
- 9: Neurobiology of Pleasure and Pain
- 10: Modern Measurement
- 11: Psychophysical Measures of Intensity
- Part III: Interpersonal Comparisons and Convention
- 12: Product Utilitarianism and an Old-New Way to Measure Utility
- 13: Dynamics of Convention
- 14: Where Do We Stand?
About the author
Louis Narens is Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of Abstract Measurement Theory (MIT, 1985) and Introduction to the Theories of Measurement and Meaningfulness and the Use of Invariance in Science (Lawrence Erlbaum, 2007).
Brian Skyrms is Distinguished Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science and Economics at the University of California, Irvine. His interests include the evolution of conventions, the social contract, inductive logic, decision theory, rational deliberation, the metaphysics of logical atomism, causality, and truth. He is the author of Signals: Evolution, Learning, and Information (OUP, 2010), From Zeno to Arbitrage: Essays on Quantity, Coherence, and Induction (OUP, 2012), and Social Dynamics (OUP, 2014).
Summary
Utilitarianism is one of the most famous ethical doctrines, based on the ideal of maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. But Utilitarians and their opponents lack a clear scientific and philosophical understanding of its foundations: the measurement and aggregation of utility. This is what The Pursuit of Happiness now offers.
Additional text
a beautiful example of the benefits of collaboration between scientists and philosophers . . . a novel approach to utilitarianism that they take to be scientifically feasible and which avoids some of the problems associated with the traditional views . . . readers will appreciate the rich and illuminating discussion of the utilitarian tradition from Bentham to the present.
