Great website, but I've a couple of questions. Are there any plans to publish an ebook? How can I report typos and dead links? And are there any plans for articles about forgotten utilitarian thinkers like Spencer and Godwin?
(1) Yes, Hackett Publishing is going to produce (paid, but affordable) print and ebook textbook editions for us, with all author royalties going to charity. That won't be ready until 2024, however. We plan to make a free PDF of the whole website available before then (right now you can download the articles one at a time). I'll post an update when that's ready.
(3) No immediate plans, as expanding the thinker pages aren't our top priority, but we're open to suggestions (especially if you can suggest an academic specialist who we might commission to write the article).
Feb 13, 2023·edited Feb 13, 2023Liked by Richard Y Chappell
IMO the "resources-and-further-reading" and further reading section could benefit from more resources on the formal side. In addition to Broome's Weighing Goods, which is very long, still quite hard for a non-technical reader to understand, and not rigorous, I would suggest including the state of the art papers on his topic:
- Mongin and Pivato 2015 "Ranking multidimensional alternatives and uncertain prospects" JET
- Fleurbaey and Mongin 2016, "Utilitarian Relevance of the Aggregation Theorem" AEJ Micro
- McCarthy, Mikkola, Thomas 2020, "Utilitarianism with and without expected utility" J Math Econ
I believe these papers give the state of the art understanding of Harsanyi's two classic theorems on utilitarianism from the 1950s. I believe the first two papers above primarily concern the 1955 theorem, while McCarthy et al relates more to the 1953 though probably relates to both.
Other topics papers to consider referencing include
Campbell Brown's "Consequentialize This", Fleurbey's "Assessing Risky Social Situations", and possibly recent papers from infinite ethics.
Thanks, these look helpful! (We also have a guest essay in the works on formal arguments for utilitarianism -- incl. Harsanyi's theorems -- which I'm looking forward to...)
Great website, but I've a couple of questions. Are there any plans to publish an ebook? How can I report typos and dead links? And are there any plans for articles about forgotten utilitarian thinkers like Spencer and Godwin?
(1) Yes, Hackett Publishing is going to produce (paid, but affordable) print and ebook textbook editions for us, with all author royalties going to charity. That won't be ready until 2024, however. We plan to make a free PDF of the whole website available before then (right now you can download the articles one at a time). I'll post an update when that's ready.
(2) Email us at contact@utilitarianism.net -- thanks!
(3) No immediate plans, as expanding the thinker pages aren't our top priority, but we're open to suggestions (especially if you can suggest an academic specialist who we might commission to write the article).
IMO the "resources-and-further-reading" and further reading section could benefit from more resources on the formal side. In addition to Broome's Weighing Goods, which is very long, still quite hard for a non-technical reader to understand, and not rigorous, I would suggest including the state of the art papers on his topic:
- Mongin and Pivato 2015 "Ranking multidimensional alternatives and uncertain prospects" JET
- Fleurbaey and Mongin 2016, "Utilitarian Relevance of the Aggregation Theorem" AEJ Micro
- McCarthy, Mikkola, Thomas 2020, "Utilitarianism with and without expected utility" J Math Econ
I believe these papers give the state of the art understanding of Harsanyi's two classic theorems on utilitarianism from the 1950s. I believe the first two papers above primarily concern the 1955 theorem, while McCarthy et al relates more to the 1953 though probably relates to both.
Other topics papers to consider referencing include
Campbell Brown's "Consequentialize This", Fleurbey's "Assessing Risky Social Situations", and possibly recent papers from infinite ethics.
Thanks, these look helpful! (We also have a guest essay in the works on formal arguments for utilitarianism -- incl. Harsanyi's theorems -- which I'm looking forward to...)
It's now become so good that it exists in all possible worlds!
In this case, I'm really just highlighting others' excellent work. So my thanks to Boris and to all of our guest authors!