Talk:Timeline of utilitarianism

Review by Vipul on 2023-06-11

Version reviewed: https://timelines.issarice.com/index.php?title=Timeline_of_utilitarianism&oldid=74385

Process used: Review process for timelines

General standalone evaluation comments

• It would help to have additional columns on the type of utilitarianism. I think three columns could help: rule vs act, type of utility (e.g., hedonic vs negative vs preference), meta-ethics (e.g., Christianity / divine command theory) and scope (e.g., people vs. all sentient beings, total vs. average, present vs. future).
• The timeline needs to have inclusion criteria specified.
• It would help to give a bit more context/color on the prevailing moral philosophy at the time that utilitarian ideas started to take shape. Specifically, the Enlightenment-era utilitarianism arose against a backdrop where moral philosophy in the region was heavily rooted in (Christian) divine command theory and moving away from it gradually. So the initial utilitarians had a heavy Christian bent but over time utilitarian ideas became less religiously inclined and more based on secular moral reasoning. Similarly Mohism arose in an era where Confucianism had just started taking root so it built on and also challenged some of the ideas in Confucianism.
• It may be worth including more about the relationship between utilitarianism and cost-benefit analysis, which is not quite the same thing but is based on utilitarian ideas. Cost-benefit analyses are ubiquitous in decision-making in governments, corporation, non-profits, and elsewhere, and shows the influence of utilitarian thinking.

Line-by-line comments

• The hash fragment in the link for the first reference in the Epicurus row doesn't seem to work, so it's not clear where on the page or where in the video the reference points to.
• Language in Mozi row: "he would held a utilitarian status describing heaven as primary moral authority" -- the word "held" seems to be the wrong word.✔
• Duplicate reference: First and third reference for row about Mozi's birth point to the same resource.
• New World Encyclopedia as reference: Seems like a fork of Wikipedia, probably not suitable as a reference.✔
• 1725 Francis Hutcheson row: is the quote intended for the whole para, or just the first sentence in it?
• 1749 David Hartley row: "Hartley openly introduces Newton's method and terminology into psychology." Newton's method links to the root-finding method in calculus; the other Newton's method is the closely related optimization method. It's unclear what Newton's method would be in the context of psychology.
• 1976 Motive utilitarianism row: "Utilitarian and Personality 197" -- it isn't clear what "197" here means.✔
• 1981 two rows for R. M. Hare seem to be talking about the same book and concept?✔
• 1992 row about Mo-Tzu: Mo-Tzu seems like another name for Mozi? Make this clear if so✔
• 2015 row about Peter Singer: "Peter Singer publishes The Most Good You Can Do, which introduces the concept of effective altruism." Effective altruism existed before this time; see timeline of effective altruism.

External verification

Wikipedia

Vipul reviewed the Wikipedia page utilitarianism. Overall, the timeline seemed to offer good coverage of most of the content of the Wikipedia page, while clearly adding value through its chronological account of the development of the subject.

ChatGPT

This timeline covered the content in the timeline that ChatGPT wrote upon being prompted to write a timeline of utilitarianism. It is clearly superior to that timeline.

Further notes added by Vipul 2023-06-20

Here are a few further suggestions:

• Describe the idea of utility monster introduced by Robert Nozick, and its implications for utilitarianism✔
• Maybe expand more on the relationship between utilitarianism and effective altruism
• Maybe more on the distinction between utilitarianism and consequentialism?
• Any surveys of philosophers regarding their personal view on utilitarianism?
• Talk about criticisms of utilitarianism as cold and calculating, and any research into the moral and emotional profiles of self-identified utilitarians that supports/opposes that belief?