Word.ws English Dictionary

negative utilitarian

negative utilitarian adjective: pertaining to negative utilitarianism.

Adjective

negative utilitarian (comparative more negative utilitarian, superlative most negative utilitarian)

  1. Pertaining to negative utilitarianism.
    • Notice, however, that a single-minded emphasis on eliminating pain would seem to imply that hunting a population of sentient creatures to extinction would be a good thing, because this would prevent an infinite amount of pain. Although the hedonistic utilitarian principle as usually formulated...1998, Gary E[dward] Varner, “Can Animal Rights Activists Be Environmentalists?”, in In Nature’s Interests? Interests, Animal Rights, and Environmental Ethics (Environmental Ethics and Science Policy...
    • Some argue for a negative utilitarian view that focuses on minimization of misery rather than the maximization of well-being (Wolf 1997).2001, Clark Wolf, “Population”, in Dale Jamieson, editor, A Companion to Environmental Philosophy (Blackwell Companions to Philosophy), Maiden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, →ISBN, part IV (Problems...

Noun

negative utilitarian (plural negative utilitarians)

  1. Someone who practices or advocates negative utilitarianism.
    • Although, along with many so-called negative utilitarians, his emphasis is on reducing pain, rather than increasing pleasure.2001, Christopher Belshaw, Environmental Philosophy: Reason, Nature and Human Concern, Chesham, Bucks: Acumen, →ISBN, page 296
    • Rather than strive to achieve the best balance of happiness over pain, negative utilitarians argue that we should be concerned with minimising extremes of pain.2006, Gerald Jones, Daniel Cardinal, Jeremy Hayward, Moral Philosophy: A Guide to Ethical Theory (Philosophy in Focus), London: Hodder Murray, published 2010, →ISBN, page 84

Examples of negative utilitarian in a sentence

  • Some transhumanist scholars hold a negative utilitarian ethic, advocating that the strongest ethical mandate is the abolition of suffering among sentient beings.2014, Ronald M[ichael] Green, Nathan J. Palpant, “Suffering and Bioethics: An Introduction to the Volume”, in Suffering and Bioethics...
  • First, as indicated already, negative utilitarians seek to minimize the sum total of distress.2008, Roger Brownsword, Rights, Regulation, and the Technological Revolution, Oxford, Oxon: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 54:

Forms of negative utilitarian

Adjective
comparativemore negative utilitarian
superlativemost negative utilitarian
Noun
pluralnegative utilitarians

Questions about negative utilitarian

What does negative utilitarian mean?
Negative utilitarian means pertaining to negative utilitarianism.
How do you use negative utilitarian in a sentence?
Some transhumanist scholars hold a negative utilitarian ethic, advocating that the strongest ethical mandate is the abolition of suffering among sentient beings.
What part of speech is negative utilitarian?
Negative utilitarian can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near negative utilitarian in the dictionary

  1. negative spaces
  2. negative split
  3. negative theology
  4. negative transfer
  5. negative transfers
  6. negative utilitarian
  7. negative utilitarianism
  8. negative utilitarianisms
  9. negative utilitarians
  10. negative verb
  11. negative verbs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: negative utilitarian (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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