UTILITARIAN IMPARTIALITY AND CONTEMPORARY DARWINISM

• Authors: Bracanovic Tomislav
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The first draft of this article was presented in December 2002 at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research (Altenberg, Austria), as part of author's research project on the evolutionary perspective on human nature and ethics. Its second draft was presented at a conference entitled „Freedom and Equality in Contemporary Philosophy“, organized by the Society for the Advancement of Philosophy in Samobor (Croatia) in June 2005. The author thanks both audiences for their constructive discussions. One important component of utilitarian ethical framework is a specific version of the principle of impartiality. The principle claims that one should bring about the greatest possible overall utility or happiness and that our moral and morally relevant actions ought to result from objective and neutral deliberations, with all our personal interests, likes and dislikes left out. Drowing on relevant insights from sociobiology and evolutionary psychology this paper seeks to show that utilitarian principle of impartiality is seriously endangered by two interconnected Darwinian facts: (1) the fact that human biologically shaped psychology and motivation mechanisms do not fit well with the principle requiring the indiscriminate promotion of general happiness, and (2) the fact that human beings are individuals with naturally evolved personal desires, projects and ideals, and not merely spare parts of some general utilitarian clockwork of happiness.

Keywords

EN

DARWINISM; IMPARTIALITY; UTILITARIANISM

Discipline

• PHILOSOPHY: PHILOSOPHY

• Publisher: Institute of Philosophy, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Filozofia (Philosophy)
• Year: 2007
• Volume: 62
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 14-26
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Bracanovic Tomislav

• T. Bracanovic, Filozoficky ustav SAV, Klemensova 19, 813 64 Bratislava, Slovak Republic

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

07SKAAAA02084433