That was one example in a very large space of possibilities; you can differentiate the consequences of actions in any way you please, as long as you’re doing so in a well-behaved way. You don’t even need to be using a sum—average utilitarianism doesn’t.
This does carry a couple of caveats, of course. Some methods give much less pathological results than others, and some are much less well studied.
That was one example in a very large space of possibilities; you can differentiate the consequences of actions in any way you please, as long as you’re doing so in a well-behaved way. You don’t even need to be using a sum—average utilitarianism doesn’t.
This does carry a couple of caveats, of course. Some methods give much less pathological results than others, and some are much less well studied.