Utility, exchange, and commensurability

Journal of Thought 23:111-131 (1988)
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Abstract

The principle of exchange seems to be limited in its application, and it cannot serve as a link between utilitarianism and the idea of a market for interpersonal relations. Our preferences concern the inner states of other people as well as their overt behavior. The neglect of this aspect of our preferences is a result of the coupling of utilitarianism with behaviorism. The problem is thus behaviorism, not consequentialism. It might be argued that commensurability is wrong because it sanctions impure practices - aside from any principle of exchange. In reply, it may be argued that the principle of purity is an intuitive one, which must be justified at a higher level. At the intuitive level, the purity principle competes with the view that practices are in some cases too pure already, and that blind purity cannot be maintained without educational deception. The apparent difficulty of making tradeoffs among different kinds of consequences is a problem in practice, not a problem in principle. The difficulty may indeed justify certain prescriptive rules, but a blanket prohibition against impure practices would seem to require considerable defense.

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Citations of this work

Nonconsequentialist decisions.Jonathan Baron - 1994 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17 (1):1-10. Translated by Jonathan Baron.
Normative, descriptive and prescriptive responses.Jonathan Baron - 1994 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17 (1):32-42.
Inappropriate judgements: Slips, mistakes or violations?Peter Ayton & Nigel Harvey - 1994 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17 (1):12-12.
Does consequentialism pay?Adam Morton - 1994 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17 (1):24-24.
Why care where moral intuitions come from?Susan Dwyer - 1994 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17 (1):14-15.

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