Adams taught for many years at UCLA before moving to Yale University in the early 1990s as the Clark Professor of Moral Philosophy and Metaphysics. As chairman, he revived the Philosophy Department. Adams retired from Yale in 2004 and taught part time at University of Oxford in England, where he is a fellow of Mansfield College and where his wife was Regius Professor of Divinity. In 2009 he became a Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
As a historical scholar, he has published on the work of the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard and is a respected Leibniz scholar. His work in the philosophy of religion includes influential essays on the problem of evil and divine command theories of ethics. He is a past president of the Society of Christian Philosophers. In 1999, he delivered the Gifford Lectures, "God and Being". He is a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Science and the British Academy.
His wife, Marilyn McCord Adams, is also a philosopher, working on medieval philosophy and the philosophy of religion.
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Motive
This approach is an interesting hybrid between act and rule utilitarianism first developed by Robert Adams ("Motive Utilitarianism," Journal of Philosophy, 1976) which attempts to deal realistically with how human beings actually function psychologically.
We are indeed passionate, emotional creatures, we do much better with positive goals rather than with negative prohibitions, and so on and so forth. Motive utilitarianism proposes that our initial moral task is to inculcate motives within ourselves that will be generally useful across the spectrum of the actual situations we are likely to encounter (rather than hypothetical examples which are unlikely to occur).
For example, similar to the 80-20 rule in business, we might be able to most improve the future package of experiences if we do a large number of activities in honest partnerships with others, even imperfectly, instead of a few things sneakily by ourselves. Examples of motive utilitarianism in practice might be a gay person coming out of the closet and/or a politician publicly breaking with a war. In both cases, there is likely to be an initial surge of power and confidence, as well as a transitional period in which one is likely to be losing old friends before making new friends, and unpredictably so on both counts. Another example might be a doctor who is a skilled diagnostician. Such a physician is likely to have a good baseline in first principles and might occasionally go back to them. However, he or she is more likely to spend time and mental energies on secondary principles. That is, the doctor will spend time on what seems and feels like the next constructive chapter in patient communication and monitoring progress as it goes along, and only occasionally performing an interesting study in biochemistry.
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Utilitarianism
is the idea that the moral worth of an action is solely determined by its contribution to overall utility, that is, its contribution to happiness or pleasure as summed among all persons. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined by its outcome—the ends justify the means. Utility — the good to be maximized — has been defined by various thinkers as happiness or pleasure (versus sadness or pain), though preference utilitarians like Peter Singer define it as the satisfaction of preferences. It may be described as a life stance with happiness or pleasure as ultimate importance.
It can be described by the phrase "the greatest good for the greatest number", though the phrase 'greatest number' gives rise to the problematic mere addition paradox. Utilitarianism can thus be characterized as a quantitative and reductionistic approach to ethics.
Utilitarianism can be contrasted with deontological ethics (which disregards the consequences of performing an act, when determining its moral worth) and virtue ethics (which focuses on character), as well as with other varieties of consequentialism. Adherents of these opposing views have extensively criticized the utilitarian view, though utilitarians have been similarly critical of other schools of ethical thought.
In general use of the term utilitarian often refers to a somewhat narrow economic or pragmatic viewpoint. However, philosophical utilitarianism is much broader than this, for example some approaches to utilitarianism consider non-human animals in addition to people.
- A brief account of the history of logic, from the The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (edited by Ted Honderich), OUP 1997, 497-500.
- A biography of Peter Abelard, published in the Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 115, edited by Jeremiah Hackett, Detroit: Gale Publishing, 3-15.
- Philosophy in the Latin Christian West, 750-1050, in A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages, edited by Jorge Gracia and Tim Noone, Blackwell 2003, 32-35.
- Ockham wielding his razor!
- Review of The Beatles Anthology, Chronicle Books 2000 (367pp).
- A brief discussion note about Susan James, Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy.
- Review of St. Thomas Aquinas by Ralph McInerny, University of Notre Dame Press 1982 (172pp). From International Philosophical Quarterly23 (1983), 227-229.
- Review of William Heytesbury on Maxima and Minima by John Longeway, D.Reidel 1984 (x+201pp). From The Philosophical Review 96 (1987), 146-149.
- Review of That Most Subtle Question by D. P. Henry, Manchester University Press 1984 (xviii+337pp). From The Philosophical Review 96 (1987), 149-152.
- Review of Introduction to the Problem of Individuation in the Early Middle Ages by Jorge Gracia, Catholic University of America Press 1984 (303pp). From The Philosophical Review 97 (1988), 564-567.
- Review of Introduction to Medieval Logic by Alexander Broadie, OUP 1987 (vi+150pp). From The Philosophical Review 99 (1990), 299-302.
