Peter Singer

The ancient philosopher Mozi inspired Mohism, similar to Western utilitarianism. Western utilitarianism calls actions to be right if they are useful for the benefit of the majority. Mozi is also known as the original consequentialist. Within his arguments for consequentialism, he proposed that to have moral reasoning in making decisions, humans must be totally impartial. Impartiality in reasoning is the concept of not having any interest in yourself when making the decision and focusing on the…

Utilitarianism Regarding Moral Reasoning and Privacy Rights Utilitarianism is essentially a doctrine within the study of ethics that focuses on the pleasures and pains of an individual in regard to their actions being beneficial to a majority. The principle question the doctrine seeks to answer is, “What ought a man to do?”, with the outcome being his actions provide the best results possible. As a branch of consequentialism (which, on a wider scale, focuses on an action’s outcome being…

The two different forms of utilitarianism that are described by Shaw and Barry are Act and Rule utilitarianism. The act utilitarianism is the most basic from of utilitarianism. In this form our main goal is to maximize happiness for everyone concerned about therefore we judge every situation by asking ourselves question how consequences of specific act will affect the involved people. If the consequences of one act bring more happiness compare to other actions, then we consider that act as a…

Utilitarianism began as a movement in ethics of the late eighteenth-century primarily associated with the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham. The basic principle of Utilitarianism involves a calculus of happiness, in which actions are deemed to be good if they tend to produce happiness in the form of pleasure and evil if they tend to promote pain. As such, the philosophy is said to derive from the classical concept of hedonism, which values the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain. The…

Morality through happiness, while preventing pain, is the major concept of John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism. In this edition of his writing, Mill talks about Utility’s “greatest happiness principle” and the logic that flows behind it. The critical ideas that come out of Utilitarianism is the idea of happiness as as the end moral goal and that Utilitarians recognize sacrifice for the greater good. The main objective of this essay is to figure out whether it is moral for a person to take the…

As the great Mr. Spock said, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” This is essentially what utilitarianism is. You’re maximizing the “utility” of each of the parts of a whole. It is a form of consequentialism, which means that whether the action is justifiable or moral is dependent on the consequence of the action. This particular form of consequentialism just states that the best moral action to take would be one that maximizes utility, whether it is on an individual or group…

Consequential theory is an ethical theory that emphasizes the consequences or results of behaviour. Morality of an action is based on the outcomes or consequences of the action. According to this theory a morally right action is the action that will produce a good outcome. One of the most used examples of consequentialism is if one breaks a promise. Breaking the promise is neither good nor bad; it solely is dependent on the outcome of this action. Volkswagen decided and installed software termed…

Utilitarianism is defined as the action taken that will maximize utility, or bring the most happiness to the people involved. There are two kinds of utilitarianism, act and rule. I shall refer to act as extreme and rule as restricted. In the following paper I will define extreme and restricted utilitarianism separately and then demonstrate how Smart establishes a difference between the two in the Desert Island Promise case and how Smart chooses extreme utilitarianism and what he ought to do in…

In the Ethics of Philosophy, Utilitarianism is the doctrine that our actions are correct if the result of our actions produces the greatest happiness between the majorities. However, in: "What's going on with Slavery?" Some objectivist utilitarianism tried to deny this morality, which reflects on the estate of any importance accusing the terrible actions of slave merchants and slave owners in utilitarianism. They attack this doctrine by saying that utilitarianism is a belief system that he can…

Singer, Peter (1972). Famine, Affluence, and Morality. Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (3):229-243. “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” was written by a well-known Jewish philosopher named Peter Singer. Singer has made many endeavors in ethics, tackling different taboo issues such as abortion, euthanasia, and animal rights. He grew up and attended school in Melbourne, Australia. In college, he became an avid proponent of veganism and vegetarianism leading him to pen his well-known book Animal…