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The Distinction Between Criterion and Decision Procedure: A Reply to Madison Powers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

James Griffin
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Extract

Madison Powers raises the difficult problem of repugnant desires. The problem is not only difficult but pervasive, more pervasive even than Powers says. He notes that it affects hedonist, eudaimonist, and desire-fulfilment forms of utilitarianism; but it also affects the form of utilitarianism that uses a list of irreducibly plural values, so long as one of the values on the list is pleasure or happiness, and it can affect non-utilitarian positions as well for the same reason.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , November 1994 , pp. 177 - 182
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

1 In ‘Dan Brock: Quality of Life Measures in Health Care and Medical Ethics”, The Quality of Life, ed. Nussbaum, Martha and Sen, Amartya, Oxford, 1993, pp. 132–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 I have discussed these, and other, human limitations and their implications for ethics more fully in ‘On the Winding Road from Good to Right”, Value, Welfare, and Morality, ed. Frey, R. G. and Morris, C. W., Cambridge, 1993, pp. 158–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and also in ‘The Human Good and the Ambitions of Consequentialism”, The Good Life and the Human Good, ed. Paul, E. F., Miller, F. D., and Paul, J., Cambridge, 1992, pp. 118–32.Google Scholar