Philosophy 880, Topics in Ethics:

Consequentialism and Cost-Benefit Analysis

Course documents:

Syllabus

Course-related items in the news:

“As U.S. Agencies Put More Value on a Life, Businesses Fret”
(New York Times article about the dollar value of a human life, February 16, 2011)

“Happiness, Philosophy and Science”
(New York Times column about empirical and philosophical research on happiness, August 31, 2011)

Announcements:

May 13, 2011:

Today I sent the following e-mail message to all enrolled students:

From: Eggleston, Ben
Sent: Friday, May 13, 2011 11:19 AM
To: PHIL880 (26220) Fa11 - DL
Subject: optional summer reading for consequentialism seminar

Dear students enrolled in my Fall 2011 consequentialism seminar,

A couple of you have recently asked me about reading that you might do this summer in order to prepare for the seminar this fall. I have thought about this a bit, and would recommend the following:

1. the chapter(s) on utilitarianism in any introductory ethics textbook

2. _Utilitarianism_, by John Stuart Mill (1861)

3. _Utilitarianism: For and Against_, by J. J. C. Smart and Bernard Williams (Cambridge University Press, 1973)

4. any of the works scheduled as required reading on the provisional syllabus for the course posted at http://web.ku.edu/~utile/courses/conseq2.

Best,

Ben