Abstract

Practical Ethics is about the application of ethics to practical issues which are both of contemporary interest and about which any active individual in our world’s decision making process needs to reflect. More specifically, it is an attempt to show how a broadly utilitarian ethical theory treats such problems as equality, animal rights, abortion, euthanasia, obligations of the wealthy to the impoverished, and justification of means to ends. The suggestion is that answers to these problems will be the products of a straightforward deductive exercise, requiring first a clear statement and defense of the intended utilitarian theory or theories and second, an articulation of the practical issues of concern. It is to the first of these that I direct most of my remarks.