# Contested concept: utilitarian (utilitarianism)

_**What you are reading**: one contested-concept page in Deliberus's deliberation graph. Deliberus maps human reasoning — including claims that are contested, mistaken, or extreme — so that disagreement can be examined precisely. A claim's presence here is not an endorsement: the graph records that someone argued it, how it connects to other reasoning, and how far scrutiny has gotten. The metadata on this page describes the state of that scrutiny, not the truth of the claim._

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- **Contestedness**: criterion
- **Diagnosis**: Masks a dispute over whether merely possible people carry moral weight. This drives the conflict over whether existential risk reduction dominates all other priorities or is only one very important concern among others.
- **Canonical**: `/concept/utilitarian (utilitarianism)` (data: `/concept/utilitarian (utilitarianism).json`)

## Senses in use
- **Person-affecting: obligations primarily to existing and will-exist persons; loss of merely potential lives does not count; speed must be balanced against safety** — used in 7 claim(s)
- **Total/aggregative: maximize expected aggregate utility, counting potential future lives; safety always trumps speed** — used in 7 claim(s)

## Claims using this term
- [The utilitarian imperative "Maximize expected aggregate utility!" can be simplified to the maxim "Minimize existential risk!".](/claim/claim_0b5169f080fb.md) _(sense: Total/aggregative: maximize expected aggregate utility, counting potential future lives; safety always trumps speed)_
- [By contrast to the total utilitarian, the person-affecting utilitarian would have to balance [the goal of avoiding existential calamities] …](/claim/claim_1ceeb04ebb15.md) _(sense: Person-affecting: obligations primarily to existing and will-exist persons; loss of merely potential lives does not count; speed must be balanced against safety)_
- [For standard utilitarians, priority number one, two, three and four should consequently be to reduce existential risk.](/claim/claim_2f1360eae4b4.md) _(sense: Total/aggregative: maximize expected aggregate utility, counting potential future lives; safety always trumps speed)_
- [[Because rapid arrival of advanced technology is needed to keep current people alive,] the person-affecting utilitarian should emphasize sp…](/claim/claim_409a8ad58c69.md) _(sense: Person-affecting: obligations primarily to existing and will-exist persons; loss of merely potential lives does not count; speed must be balanced against safety)_
- [On a person-affecting version of utilitarianism, according to which our obligations are primarily towards currently existing persons and to…](/claim/claim_4c535decf6a9.md) _(sense: Person-affecting: obligations primarily to existing and will-exist persons; loss of merely potential lives does not count; speed must be balanced against safety)_
- [We have a utilitarian argument for the greatest possible urgency of technological development.](/claim/claim_4e5dc2dab85f.md) _(sense: Total/aggregative: maximize expected aggregate utility, counting potential future lives; safety always trumps speed)_
- [A utilitarian ought to focus her efforts on accelerating technological development.](/claim/claim_797921db4550.md) _(sense: Total/aggregative: maximize expected aggregate utility, counting potential future lives; safety always trumps speed)_
- [For the person-affecting utilitarian, it is not enough that humankind survives to colonize [the local supercluster]; it is crucial that ext…](/claim/claim_941a0ce9e6a2.md) _(sense: Person-affecting: obligations primarily to existing and will-exist persons; loss of merely potential lives does not count; speed must be balanced against safety)_
- [If the goal of speed conflicts with the goal of global safety, the total utilitarian should always opt to maximize safety.](/claim/claim_9ca92f801d35.md) _(sense: Total/aggregative: maximize expected aggregate utility, counting potential future lives; safety always trumps speed)_
- [If the goal of speed conflicts with the goal of global safety, the person-affecting utilitarian would have to balance the risk of people dy…](/claim/claim_b0538b74c823.md) _(sense: Person-affecting: obligations primarily to existing and will-exist persons; loss of merely potential lives does not count; speed must be balanced against safety)_
- [Few other philanthropic causes could hope to match that level of utilitarian payoff [of bringing about more than 10^29 human lives, or 10^1…](/claim/claim_bd0beb179af4.md) _(sense: Total/aggregative: maximize expected aggregate utility, counting potential future lives; safety always trumps speed)_
- [In the case where a person-affecting utilitarian regards reducing existential risk as very important but not completely dominating, there w…](/claim/claim_bfa57323720c.md) _(sense: Person-affecting: obligations primarily to existing and will-exist persons; loss of merely potential lives does not count; speed must be balanced against safety)_
- [From a utilitarian perspective, the huge loss of potential human lives [from delayed colonization of the local supercluster] constitutes a …](/claim/claim_db68c9be8554.md) _(sense: Total/aggregative: maximize expected aggregate utility, counting potential future lives; safety always trumps speed)_
- [On the assumption that the probability is negligible that any existing person will survive long enough to use a significant portion of the …](/claim/claim_dd46eb01466c.md) _(sense: Person-affecting: obligations primarily to existing and will-exist persons; loss of merely potential lives does not count; speed must be balanced against safety)_