Utilitarian Approach To Morality

Utilitarianism, in the contrary, is based on the principle of utility or usefulness. Utility is what encourages an agent to act in a particular way (Tuckett, 1998). Utility can be explained as maximizing the good like pleasure and happiness and minimizing the bad like pain and evil, all leading to the greater good for all parties involved. It weights the consequences of the actions equally between the ones involved, and the ethical solution would be to follow the greater good for most if not all the parties involved.

Perhaps the strongest argument in favor of utilitarianism is the fact that it is such a simplistic and straightforward belief system. The central focus to maximize pleasure and happiness avoids confusion and manipulation of utilitarianism. Calculating whether an action is right or wrong is as easy as calculating how much pleasure an pain will result from the action. If the action produces the most

“Utilitarianism is the view that the supreme principle of morality is to act so as to produce as much happiness as possible, each person counting equally” (Mill, 114). By ‘happiness’, this includes anything that is pleasurable and free of pain. Simply put, utilitarianism is the theory that an action is right, as long as it produces the greatest good for the most number of people (Peetush). The central point to this theory is that one must consider every consequence before taking any action. There are two classical forms of utilitarianism; rule utilitarianism and act utilitarianism. “Rule utilitarianism is the idea that an act is right if and only if it is required by a rule that is itself a member of a set of rules whose acceptance would

Utilitarianism is a very demanding ethical theory that is revolved around benefiting the majority rather than an individual. Utilitarianism states that the best action is to maximize utility. It focuses on the result or the consequences of our actions, and treats intentions of an action as irrelevant. Sometimes you may not benefit as much as you would if you were making a decision for yourself for example if you really wanted to see the new Thor movie but some other people wanted to see the new horror movie that just came out and as a group those two movies wouldn’t please everyone it may be in everyone's best interest to see The Justice League, although it may not be anybody's first choice, but it’s something that everybody can settle on and enjoy. Doing this would mean you’ve thought like an utilitarian would. “you’ve chosen the action that would produce the most overall happiness for the group, even though it produced less happiness for you than other alternatives would have.” Utilitarians suggests that when making our moral decisions we should look at it as if we were advising a group of strangers, rather than making decisions of what we think I should do. Bernard Williams who is a 20th century british philosopher gave this thought experiment. Jim is on an expedition in South America when he comes across a group of 20 prisoners and a group of soldiers. The group of prisoners are about to be executed by the soldiers. For whatever reason one of the soldiers offers Jim a

There are many ethical theories that are covered in Engineering Ethics; one of these theories is utilitarianism. A utilitarian believes an act is morally wrong or right based on the consequences of an action. The thought process of a utilitarian will be discussed in order to decide whether downloading online copyrighted files is morally right or wrong. In order to create a conclusion, the utilitarian theory must first be defined. Within the utilitarian theory, there are four distinctions that deal with the application of the principle of utility.

As stated in the lecture video, Utilitarianism is that the goals of moral actions should be to increase the most lasting happiness for the most amount of people. So basically the amount of happiness and suffering created by a person's actions is what really matters. To reach this amount of happiness for everyone we may have to break traditional moral rules to achieve this outcome.

Utilitarianism is a consequentialist theory, as explained by the philosopher Mill. Given several choices, a utilitarian would pick the morally correct choice by using the Greatest Happiness Principle (487). By looking at whether the consequences of an action will produce the greater happiness for the greater number of people than another action would, one can

The most common use of utilitarianism is by way of consequentialist moral theory. Consequentialists believe that an act’s rightness and wrongness depends solely on its consequences and nothing else. An act is right when the algebraic sum of total utility unit

Happiness and pleasure, which I will use interchangeably, make up an important part of Utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is based on the idea that an action is either extrinsically or intrinsically good. An action is extrinsically good if and only if it is good as a means, or that its effects are good. One way to determine if something has extrinsic or intrinsic value is to compare two identical worlds, one with the feature in question and one without. If the world with the feature is superior, then the feature has intrinsic value. If the worlds are equal, the feature has extrinsic value because its true value comes from something it causes. For example, chocolate has extrinsic value. I get happiness from chocolate because I like the taste and dark chocolate has health benefits. Moreover, both of those effects are also extrinsically good because the taste of chocolate is pleasing and its health benefits lead to a higher level of happiness. Any goodness that comes from the chocolate comes from the happiness that its taste and health benefits create. Mill believes that the only intrinsic good is pleasure. One would prefer a world with more pleasure to an identical world with little pleasure. Pleasure does not have any other effects. Something has intrinsic value because it is good in and of itself, regardless of its effects.

Fostering the community would be supported by the moral theory of utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is best defined as the happy principle. ( Moral Theory PowerPoint). As the happy principle, the purpose is to promote equality to all in bringing the most amount of happiness to the most people. If the heterosexual couples are jubilant and have no problems, then granting rights for the homosexual couple would just aggrandize the amount of people that are happy. Aggrandizing the amount of happiness would make the world a better place and accepting people for who they are would make life much more facile.

Utilitarianism is a limiting ethical theory that fails to grasp ethically reality. “The greatest good for the greatest number” is not ethically right in every situation. Although the majority would benefit, the minority will heavily suffer. Considering the overall consequences of our actions, the good may not always outweigh the bad, but this does mean that the good will be the ethically right thing to do. One may think they are “maximizing the overall good,” but in reality, harming many.

The main slogan of utilitarianism is as follows, “What makes me happy gives me pleasure, what gives me pleasure makes me happy.” The first sound of this sentence seems very intriguing and may cause many to believe that utilitarianism mean well. However, many basic things can cause pleasure such as; sex, drugs, food, art, etc. Therefore, isn’t it true that too much of one good thing can be terribly bad? Many see sex as a good and pleasurable thing, but there are nymphomaniacs who currently struggle to rid themselves from such an addiction, the same as drug abusers rely on rehab facilities to help them overcome substance abuse. Of course, drugs often save lives, sex is pleasurable, and food enables us to survive, and art is a very astonishing

The theory of Utilitarianism states that actions should be judged as right or wrong depending on whether they cause more happiness or unhappiness. It weighs the rightness and wrongness of an action based on consequences of that action.

Utilitarianism is a theory aimed at defining one simple basis that can be applied when making any ethical decision. It is based on a human’s natural instinct to seek pleasure and avoid pain.

Utilitarianism (U) involves carrying out an action to produce the greatest amount of good (or “utility”) for the greatest number of people, regardless of the rightness or wrongness of the action (class notes). The word “good” is defined as a sense of “satisfaction”, “gain” or “welfare” (Anonymous, 2008). Alternatively, the theory focuses on reducing the total amount of harm imposed on the greatest number of people (class notes). Viewing this theory from either perspective will generate an overall positive outcome. For an argument to be purely Utilitarian, the following three requisites must be met – the consequences