Have the number of children that maximizes average utility over your whole lifespan.
In that case an act is not a solution to a decision problem simply because it maximizes expected utility under some accurate representation of the problem.
Then the best hypothesis in \(D(B \) is the one \(g\) which maximizes the expected epistemic utility For comparative purposes, we may say that one hypothesis is better than another if it has a higher expected utility than the other by formula (1).
The evidential threshold should be set at the level that maximizes social welfare.
The optimal threshold is one that maximizes deterrence while minimizing chilling.
Within normative ethics there is some interest in the notion of a person's happiness, welfare, or well-being, especially within consequentialist approaches to morality holding that a moral action is one that maximizes well-being.
Act Utilitarians employ yet a third notion of moral considerability, which is a matter of having one's interests (e.g., the intensity, duration, etc. of one's pleasure or pain) factored into the calculus to determine which action minimizes the bad and maximizes the good.
Alternatively, one could treat FMS as involving a stringent reason not to be killed of the type that, in cases of conflict, would override what maximizes the overall good, whereas, for a being with lesser moral status, what maximizes the overall good – with this being's good included in the calculus – does settle how this being should be treated (McMahan 2002, pp. 245 247).
Harsanyi's second argument, the "aggregation theorem", is about a social planner who, facing risky prospects, maximizes expected social welfare and wants to respect individual preferences about prospects.
This is obviously true of utilitarianism (which hold that what is right maximizes total or average welfare), but even non-utilitarian views must be concerned with welfare, if they recognize the virtue of benevolence, or if they are concerned with the interests of individuals or with avoiding harm to individuals.
Thus, while it might seem that we should ask whether excluding character evidence maximizes veritistic value, the real question is whether admitting it does.
