Utilitarian Terms Research Articles

Cultural Influences on the Moral Status of Reciprocity and the Discounting of Endogenous Motivation

Americans and Hindu Indians evaluated hypothetical situations in which helping was performed in response to prior reciprocity, in response to a monetary payment, or spontaneously. Reciprocity considerations increase the number of Indians viewing helping in moral terms but had no effect on moral judgment among Americans. Americans judged that helping is less endogenously motivated when undertaken in response to the norm of reciprocity than when spontaneous, whereas Indians viewed helping as equally endogenously motivated in those two cases. Results imply that interpersonal reciprocity is invested with a deontological moral status rather than viewed in purely utilitarian terms in cultures emphasizing interdependent, as contrasted with independent, views of the self: The findings also suggest that less of a dichotomy is drawn between communal and exchange relationships and between endogenous motivation and normative conformity in the former type of culture.

Analyzing Ethical Problems in Medical Products: The Role of Conflicting Ethical Theories

AbstractEthical problems in clinical testing and regulatory affairs often involve questions about a product that will bring benefits to many people but, unexpectedly, is found to bring serious harm to a few. Frequently, persons associated with the product decide, in good faith, that the harm is ethically acceptable, and are surprised when critics denounce it. We believe that this conflict is often based on reliance on different ethical theories. Manufacturers and clinicians tend to see ethical problems in utilitarian terms, balancing good and bad results. Members of Congress, most of whom are lawyers, and advocacy groups tend to see ethical problems from a deontological standpoint, in which personal autonomy and the rights of individuals are of primary importance. We recommend a formal ethical review of such problems when they arise in clinical or manufacturing contexts, so that no ethical dimension of the problem will be overlooked.

Euthanasia, dying well and the slippery slope.

Arguments in favour of voluntary euthanasia tend to be put in utilitarian terms. This paper suggests an alternative, neo-Aristotelian argument justifying certain individual acts of both suicide and voluntary euthanasia. It goes on to examine the slippery slope arguments against legalizing euthanasia. It is suggested that such arguments cut both ways. However, the suggestion that we ought therefore to permit a social experiment in voluntary euthanasia is set alongside the Dutch experience. The latter seems to imply that if such experiments are to take place then great caution needs to be applied.

Attitude functions in advertising: The interactive role of products and self-monitoring

Attitude objects have been shown to play an important role in attitude functions, with attitudes toward some objects or products serving primarily a single function. These findings imply that products constrain the effects of other variables (e.g., personality differences) on attitude functions. Our experiments investigated whether differences in the functions of high and low self-monitors' product attitudes will emerge for some product categories but not for others. In Experiment 1, high and low self-monitors described their attitudes toward products previously identified as serving predominantly utilitarian, social identity, or multiple functions. Coding of attitude descriptions revealed that, for social identity products, high self-monitors explained their attitudes in more social terms and in less utilitarian terms than did low self-monitors. However, for utilitarian and for multiple function products, high and low self-monitors did not differ in their (strongly utilitarian) explanations of their attitudes. In Experiments 2 and 3, high and low self-monitors wrote advertisements for various products. When advertising multiple function products, high self-monitors preferred to use social arguments, whereas low self-monitors preferred to use utilitarian arguments. However, both high and low self-monitors preferred utilitarian arguments for advertising utilitarian products and social arguments for social identity products. The conditions under which self-monitoring had its greatest impact on attitude functions are discussed in terms of differences between the task of attitude description (Experiment 1) and persuasive message selection (Experiments 2 and 3).

Zur Geschichte und aktuellen Situation der Ethik in der Sowjetunion

Developments in Soviet ethics have been largely, but not exclusively, determined by the official ideology. Since 1917 philosophers have debated four successive models of morality. In the first, morality was regarded as tool of the exploiting classes and thus was superseded by communism. This attitude in fact fostered moral nihilism and anarchism. In the second period of ethical reflection, morality was contrued as a social, class-relative, phenomenon, conceived in utilitarian terms. With respect to Communist morality whatever serves socialism as defined by the Communist Party acquires the force of a moral imperative. It is important to understand whether this perspective is true to Marx's views. Whereas classical ethics assumed an extraworldy foundation for morality Marx adopted the humanist, immanentist perspective, according to which morality has a pragmatic sense as an ideal, the goal of activity. Soviet ethical theory of the Stalin era did not deviate from this perspective, for which reason ethics as a professional science was entirely subordinated to Party decrees about socialism as an ideal. In the third period beginning in the mid-fifties, a new view came to the fore which was codified in the 1961 Party program: moral values are now regarded as having a specific quality, social development involves a moral dimension, and moral values exhibit an all-human import. During this period the leading issue among philosophers is the question of the essence and specificity of morality as distinct from other forms of social consciousness. Just prior to the era of perestrojka beginning in 1985 a fourth model emerged which in fact prepared in most essential respects the actual new thinking in morality. The matters under consideration had to do with the ‘global’ dimensions of moral problems given the common experience and fears of humanity. For this reason morality was now seen as superseding politics. Presently, this reorientation has not only enabled abandoning attitudes favoring class morality, but thrown into relief the tragic consequences of this attitude within Soviet history.

The Enigma of the Micro: Lessons from the British Home Computer Boom

This article first outlines the early development of the home computer in Britain, focusing particularly on the sahence of the first "boom" years. Based on later interviews with users, we illustrate the symbolic and collective nature of home computmg. We show that there were, in fact, competing conceptions of the role of this product. Producer debates about these were also reflected in consumer evaluations. Finally, we argue that it would be wrong to evaluate early British micros in too narrowly utilitarian terms—the utility of other technological products has also had to be constructed by producers and consumers. Keywords: adoption, Britain, consumption, history, hobby, home, microcomputer, production.

Biomedicine and Technocratic Power

Current developments in biomedicine promise a genetically engineered and better future.(1) A would mean incorporating more high technology medicine into the habits of everyday life. The order of the body, that is, the sense of how we should look, act, and perform, would become the domain of conventional medicine, and we would look to medicine to intervene in human performance, ability, and even character when we thought these were less than they should be. Our willingness to accept medicine in this capacity would require the deeper conviction that technological developments and scientific discoveries are proper measures of human progress.(2) Such attitudes are not remote from contemporary values. We live in an era in which many personal and social problems are treated as if they were matters capable of technical solution-the interventionist response to infertility through in vitro fertilization is an example. Such a belief system conceals from us the probability that advanced technology will not successfully solve the complex social problems we think it should. Moreover it grants to advanced technology, and those who own and control it, a high social value. Indeed, so highly valued is technical knowledge that it can supersede moral considerations and argument in providing a base upon which therapeutic and research decisions are taken. For example, the widespread use of amniocentesis and chorionic villus sampling, which foretell the sex, health, parentage, and future diseases of the fetus, has the immediate appeal of decreasing the numbers of damaged and defective newborns by indicating the need to terminate a pregnancy but, simultaneously, the same technology has the latent function of determining which human lives are more valuable, or in utilitarian terms, which individuals are potential welfare burdens to the community in the long term. Measuring the future capacities of a fetus is a form of human accounting that estimates the individual's future costs or contribution to the society. As early diagnostic and screening procedures become technically commonplace, a classification of human traits deemed suitable for remediation is simultaneously coming into effect. In the future, as more of our genetic abilities and characteristics are foretold by technically sophisticated probes, we would look to medicine to intervene to ensure that our physical appearance and capacities are in accord with current standards of normalcy.(3) In these circumstances, the practices of biomedicine have the latent function of social engineering. Michel Foucault has argued that this is characteristic of medicine in the West, whose development is coterminus with an account of how social power is accumulated by an elite profession through its increasingly esoteric technical base.(4) The rapid increase in the medicalization of various human conditions has served to promulgate the view that medicine can perfect human life. Many of the current well publicized developments in medicine such as genetic testing, transgenic engineering, organ transplants, and so on, promise a perfected human in a future bio-utopia where debilitating diseases and degeneration have been effectively eliminated.(5) In such a future, our dependence on medicine to specify and regulate how we should live and behave has the effect of indenturing us to the professional ambitions of medicine. The point must be emphasized that medicine has not been greatly successful in raising the standards of health across the community. On the contrary, history has shown a different view.(6) However, the image and status of medicine are such that its promises to rid us of this disability and that discomfort have seemed immediately plausible. Thus, the elite position of the profession is assured and many opportunites for further expansion are gleaned from its promissory image of a bio-utopian future. Viewing medicine through a Foucauldian perspective is to be less concerned with social consequences that may result from specific biomedical achievements and more aware of the pan that the medical technocrat plays in directing social and government policy in matters that affect the individual's general life chances. …

The New Inter‐Disciplinary University Research Centres: Avenue of Expansion or Road to Retrenchment?

AbstractThis paper considers the background to the proposals of the Advisory Board for the Research Councils (ABRC) to channel the bulk of university science research allocations through new inter‐disciplinary University Research Centres (URCs) in research areas of potential strategic economic exploitability, for the most part in selected research universities within a proposed three‐tier university system. The proposals are set against the background of Britain's declining economic competitiveness, higher education's present need to justify itself to government in increasingly utilitarian terms, and the ABRC's plans for stretching limited resources by further concentrating university science and scientific research in fewer departments and centres. The origins of the URC model are examined and related to similar centres now being introduced in America. Mobility between the URCs and university departments is seen as a key issue, as is the question of whether a balance of resources can be maintained between the two. The relations between URCs, industry, and the new Centre for Exploitation of Science and Technology is also seen as important. A sensitive issue is whether or not the sort of concentration and redirection of research resources envisioned by the ABRC will result in long‐term distortions of scientific development ‐ and of the overall intellectual directions, shape and standing of British universities.

The Social Impact of a Middleman Minority in a Divided Host Society: The Case of the Portuguese in Early Seventeenth-Century Buenos Aires

HE assimilation of the Portuguese immigrants in the early seventeenth century is crucial to an understanding of the process of nation-building in Argentina, for it was responsible for setting the most notable precedent for the acculturation of foreigners. Already under mercantilism, there were efforts to accelerate the rate of population growth by means of measures intended to extend the areas under colonial control. Whether Spanish mercantilism in regard to the Spanish colonial state ever had a clear immigration policy with regard to foreigners is a matter of speculation. Juan de Solorzano y Pereira was the first to provide the crown prohibitions and exceptions with respect to foreigners in the Hapsburg period.' Later, the Philosophes (Saint-Pierre, Chastellux, Condorcet) again adopted the populationist goals of the mercantilists, arguing optimistically that the future of mankind, despite colonialism, would thereby improve. Local enlightened scholars, such as Azara, Alvear, and Lastarria, also tried to legitimize populationist policies. Unlike the populationists (Danguel, La Plombaine, and Jaubert), who were primarily concerned with combatting celibacy, the physiocrats (Quesnay, Mercier de la Riviere, Du Pont de Nemours, Morellet) indicated the limits to population growth and argued that such continuous increase was disadvantageous to a community. 2 Most of the Latin American scholars involved in the Independence movement-for example, Bernardino Rivadavia and Juliain Segundo de Aguero-expressed this population goal in a contradictory discourse, a mixture of physiocratic and utilitarian terms. Besides Rivadavia, Esteban Echeverria was the first to emphasize immigration, as a method to

Citizen Evaluations and Urban Management: Service Delivery in an Era of Protest

Ats urban analysis has focused on local services as a significant governmental function, increasing attention has been directed to citizen evaluations of these services. Such a focus can be justified in terms of democratic theory, which considers citizen evaluations of government important in and of themselves. It also makes sense in utilitarian terms, in which citizen evaluations provide responsible public officials with important cues about public perceptions of performance of local agencies.' The role of citizen evaluations of local government services has been topic of a significantly growing body of literature.' Indeed, such evaluations are increasingly incorporated into empirical work in this area of urban government.3 While some have recently questioned their practical utility to decision makers, relative position of citizen evaluations in service delivery constellation remains an open and important question.4 The significance of citizen evaluations in resolving the central issue of urban politics, delivery of essential municipal services, has yet to be determined.5 This study offers a model of citizen evaluation and response process, and, hence, provides a preliminary mapping of service delivery constellation and position within it of citizen evaluations. The model is tested by surveying a random sample of urban citizens within a single state as to their satisfaction and desire for more influence across a spectrum of essential municipal services. The practical implications of this study for those responsible for provision of essential services are then delineated.

Adam Smith and Natural Liberty

The system of natural liberty analyzed in the Wealth of Nations is evaluated by Smith in utilitarian terms, as may be seen by examining his reasons for permitting departures from the principle of laisser-faire. References to justice in the Wealth of Nations are interpreted in the light of the Moral Sentiments which, despite appearances to the contrary, also has a utilitarian value basis. Smith's ‘contemplative utilitarianism’, coupled with his belief that individual moral and political agents do not routinely make conscious utilitarian choices, manifests itself politically in a form of ‘sociological conservatism’ which restricts legal and political reforms to those which are in harmony with the immediate moral feelings of the ordinary citizen. This is demonstrated in his theory of political obligation and related to his natural theology.

How to Determine Who Should Get What

Apparently the end of ideology has at last met its own, not untimely, end. This happy state of affairs is no doubt attributable more to sheer exhaustion than to intellectual conversion, and one is naturally hesitant to risk reopening that sterile controversy. But some of the more pernicious side effects of the quest for a value-free social science remain entrenched in academic orthodoxy and, worse, continue to influence policymakers. At the head of the list must be the proposition that interpersonal comparisons of utility are impossible and, therefore, that either economists and philosophers must refrain from passing judgment on the distribution of income and wealth altogether or else they must do so in terms of a planner's preference, clearly anathema in a liberal democracy.' The alternative suggested here is that ethical judgments be provided to make interpersonal utility comparisons possible and hence to make discussion of distributive issues in comfortably utilitarian terms possible. Underlying this essay is a particular view of the place of values in social sciences. It is identical in essential respects to the one suggested toJoan Robinson by Ibsen's Peer Gynt: cannot escape from making judgments and the judgments that we make arise from the ethical preconceptions that have soaked into our view of life and are somehow printed in our brains. We cannot escape from our habits of thought. The Boyg bars the way. But we can go round about. We can see what we value, and try to see why.2 It is impossible to do social science without value judgments creeping into

Is the Church Necessary for Religious Education?

A vital subject of discussion today is the objective of education. We have not reached unanimity in our definitions, but there is a growing agreement in the general type of answer that is given to the question, are we trying to do for and with our children? Nobody is content to answer the question in purely intellectual or utilitarian terms. From the kindergarten to the college the answer is in terms of spiritual values and moral efficiency. We are speaking of social relationships, of one's ability to live largely and contributively in the life of the world. All the culture, knowledge, skill, vocational ability, must be socialized. That is to say, our aim is a certain quality of life. What do we want to do for and with our boys and girls in school and college? For answer we think of the best kind of men and women whom we know, people of character and achievement, and we say that we would like to help the young folk to become like them. And what are we trying to do for them in religious education? For answer again, we think of the religious men and women who bring forth the fruits of the spirit, who are followers of Christ, with something of his attitude toward life, and we say that we are trying to help the young folk to come into some such experience and some such quality of living. If, then, education in its more general aspects and religious education in particular are finding their objectives in a quality of human living, what has the church to do with it?