IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jocore/v29y1985i1p137-159.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Utilitarianism and the Conflict of Interests

Author

Listed:
  • J. Moreh

    (Department of Economics, Queen's University of Belfast)

Abstract

Utilitarianism has most relevance to “helping behavior†where the agent's action is parametric, that is, the behavior of others can be taken as given. The utilitarian principle has also been applied to strategic behavior, that is, behavior that can be represented by a game. It is shown in this article that the utilitarian objective may conflict with common sense ethics, and where it does not, questions of equity may arise for which Utilitarianism has no answer. Utilitarian writers have paid scant attention to the games of exchange and externality. In neither of these games does the utilitarian approach agree with our moral intuitions. Apart from this, if all goods either entered into exchange or gave rise to externalities, then the utilitarian solution to these problems would be tantamount to a distribution of welfare that maximized total utility. Such a distribution would be unfair to those who have a relatively low capacity to enjoy goods and to those who suffer negative externalities but impose light ones on others or none at all.

Suggested Citation

  • J. Moreh, 1985. "Utilitarianism and the Conflict of Interests," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 29(1), pages 137-159, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jocore:v:29:y:1985:i:1:p:137-159
    DOI: 10.1177/0022002785029001007
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022002785029001007
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0022002785029001007?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marcus Fleming, 1952. "A Cardinal Concept of Welfare," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 66(3), pages 366-384.
    2. Otto A. Davis & Andrew Whinston, 1962. "Externalities, Welfare, and the Theory of Games," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 70(3), pages 241-241.
    3. Leif Johansen, 1979. "The Bargaining Society And The Inefficiency Of Bargaining," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(3), pages 497-522, August.
    4. John C. Harsanyi, 1955. "Cardinal Welfare, Individualistic Ethics, and Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 63(4), pages 309-309.
    5. Sen, Amartya, 1973. "On Economic Inequality," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198281931, Decembrie.
    6. Collard, David, 1975. "Edgeworth's Propositions on Altruism," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 85(338), pages 355-360, June.
    7. William Vickrey, 1960. "Utility, Strategy, and Social Decision Rules," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 74(4), pages 507-535.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Traub, Stefan & Seidl, Christian & Schmidt, Ulrich, 2003. "Lorenz, Pareto, Pigou: Who Scores Best? Experimental Evidence on Dominance Relations of Income Distributions," Economics Working Papers 2003-04, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Department of Economics.
    2. Mongin, Philippe, 2019. "Interview of Peter J. Hammond," CRETA Online Discussion Paper Series 50, Centre for Research in Economic Theory and its Applications CRETA.
    3. Traub, Stefan & Seidl, Christian & Schmidt, Ulrich & Levati, Maria Vittoria, 2003. "Friedman, Harsanyi, Rawls, Boulding - or Somebody Else?," Economics Working Papers 2003-03, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Department of Economics.
    4. Traub, Stefan & Seidl, Christian & Schmidt, Ulrich, 2009. "An experimental study on individual choice, social welfare, and social preferences," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(4), pages 385-400, May.
    5. Kotaro Suzumura, 2002. "Introduction to social choice and welfare," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 442, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    6. Stefan Traub & Christian Seidl & Ulrich Schmidt & Maria Levati, 2005. "Friedman, Harsanyi, Rawls, Boulding – or somebody else? An experimental investigation of distributive justice," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 24(2), pages 283-309, April.
    7. Bleichrodt, Han, 1997. "Health utility indices and equity considerations," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 65-91, February.
    8. Seidl, Christian & Camacho Cuena, Eva & Morone, Andrea, 2003. "Income Distributions versus Lotteries Happiness, Response-Mode Effects, and Preference," Economics Working Papers 2003-01, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Department of Economics.
    9. İbrahim Erdem SEÇİLMİŞ, 2014. "Seniority: A Blessing or A Curse? The Effect of Economics Training on the Perception of Distributive Justice," Sosyoekonomi Journal, Sosyoekonomi Society, issue 22(22).
    10. Kaynar, Nur & Karsu, Özlem, 2018. "Equitable decision making approaches over allocations of multiple benefits to multiple entities," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 85-98.
    11. Heckman, James, 2001. "Accounting for Heterogeneity, Diversity and General Equilibrium in Evaluating Social Programmes," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 111(475), pages 654-699, November.
    12. Kolm, Serge-Christophe, 1998. "Chance and justice: Social policies and the Harsanyi-Vickrey-Rawls problem," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(8), pages 1393-1416, September.
    13. Claude Hillinger, 2005. "The Case for Utilitarian Voting," Homo Oeconomicus, Institute of SocioEconomics, vol. 23, pages 295-321.
    14. Gajdos, Thibault & Weymark, John A., 2012. "Introduction to inequality and risk," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(4), pages 1313-1330.
    15. Amartya K. Sen, 1997. "From Income Inequality to Economic Inequality," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 64(2), pages 384-401, October.
    16. John A. Weymark, 2011. "On Kolm’s Use of Epistemic Counterfactuals in Social Choice Theory," Studies in Choice and Welfare, in: Marc Fleurbaey & Maurice Salles & John A. Weymark (ed.), Social Ethics and Normative Economics, pages 279-301, Springer.
    17. Jay Simon, 2016. "On the existence of altruistic value and utility functions," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 81(3), pages 371-391, September.
    18. Loïc Berger & Johannes Emmerling, 2020. "Welfare As Equity Equivalents," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(4), pages 727-752, September.
    19. repec:hal:journl:dumas-00906152 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Songtao Wang & Bin Li & Tristan Kenderdine, 2019. "Towards a Utilitarian Social Welfare Function¡ªIncome Inequality and National Welfare Growth in China," Research in World Economy, Research in World Economy, Sciedu Press, vol. 10(3), pages 344-358, December.
    21. Graciela Chichilnisky & Peter J. Hammond & Nicholas Stern, 2020. "Fundamental utilitarianism and intergenerational equity with extinction discounting," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 54(2), pages 397-427, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jocore:v:29:y:1985:i:1:p:137-159. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://pss.la.psu.edu/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.