Iain King

Iain King is a British writer. He is most notable for his 2008 book, How to Make Good Decisions and Be Right All the Time – Solving the Riddle of Right and Wrong, which tries to amend utilitarianism to save it from its many criticisms, and in the process generates a new moral philosophy. King's work has influenced the British Liberal Democrats, and is taught in some undergraduate philosophy programmes.

Biography
According to a 2012 biography, he has "Never been conventional. He spent a year busking around Europe – playing the guitar standing on his head... he helped introduce a new currency into Kosovo and worked alongside soldiers on the battlefront in Afghanistan..." where he deployed to more frontline bases than any other civilian. He taught philosophy at Cambridge University, UK, where he was a Fellow of the University associated with Simon Blackburn's school of quasi-realism. CNN interviewed him in 2007, describing him as an author and planner. It has been suggested that his philosophy work is almost accidental, intended to popularise the subject rather than innovate.

King’s Quasi-Utilitarianism
King accepts seven commonly cited flaws with utilitarianism. These are:


 * 1) It can be self-defeating
 * 2) It only considers future consequences, ignoring important events in the past
 * 3) It places decision-making authority in questionable hands
 * 4) It doesn’t discriminate fairly between people
 * 5) Individual concerns are sacrificed to the group interest
 * 6) Promises, fairness and telling the truth are down-graded
 * 7) Utilitarianism doesn’t offer any clear rules.

He attributes these flaws to a ‘more fundamental problem’ with utilitarianism: ‘the basic reason for following it is ‘hollow’, and he attacks John Stuart Mill’s proof of Utilitarianism as ‘not logic at all’. .

King then makes adjustments to utilitarianism so that these criticisms no longer apply. He starts by re-working Pascal’s Wager, to say we should all seek value in life (because if there is no value to be found, then it doesn’t matter what we do, so we might as well seek value). This could simply provide an alternative meta-ethical justification for utilitarianism, or Rawlsianism. But instead, he uses several arguments (which he calls ‘proofs’) to argue that seeking value leads elsewhere: that it requires empathising with others and accepting certain obligations. This enables him to breakaway from consequentialism towards a hybrid philosophy which also incorporates deontological and virtue-based considerations. He has drawn an analogy between ethics and the wave-particle duality of light, suggesting ethics takes different forms (consequentialist, act-based or virtue-based) according to the situation. .

He presents an argument that empathy and obligation lead in turn to a fundamental principle of ethics, the Help Principle – ‘Help someone if your help is worth more to them than it is to you’. He then applies this Help Principle to a range of philosophical puzzles, and derives principles which provide ethical advice for several areas. These include promises, romance, lying, human rights, the fair distribution of resources, social choice theory, charity, punishment and legal positivism. This method, he claims, addresses the seven problems with traditional utilitarianism, offering a credible ‘quasi-utilitarianism’ in its place. . He also suggests it allows for the concept of moral progress - the evolution of ethical values.

King’s work has been criticised because, like utilitarianism and quasi-realism, his system still tries to derive an ‘objective morality from subjective valuations’. . Also, because his work avoids what he calls 'philosophical jargon', it has been both praised as 'accessible' and criticised for being simplistic. King has also been criticised for failing to respond to Robert Nozick's argments. British Liberal Democrats have suggested his work provides ‘a reason to try to do what is right’