Bentham's Concept Of Act Utilitarianism

Act utilitarianism has slightly different connotations depending on the philosopher being discussed. However, the general contemporary act utilitarian defines an action as morally necessary only if there is no other action that would produce an equal or greater amount of happiness. In line with this contemporary definition, Bentham recognized the fundamental role of pleasure and pain in the human life and used his knowledge to create an act utilitarian measure of actions. Bentham approves or disapproves an action based on the amount of pain or pleasure the action causes. Likewise, he equates good actions with pleasure and evil actions with pain. Bentham also claims that pleasure and pain can be quantified numerically. Thus, an evil action causing …show more content…
In addition, assume that the patient 1 is a perfect match for the transplants the other five need to survive. Each patient has the same quantitative impact on the wellbeing of society. Each patient also has a four-person family consisting of a spouse and two children, thus each individuals’ death would equally benefit or harm the same amount of people (3). Considering Bentham’s criteria for act utilitarianism and the details of the dilemma we must consider if a utilitarianist would kill one to save five or spare one and condemn …show more content…
However, rule utilitarianism does give a more satisfactory answer than act utilitarianism because it depends on a set of moral values rather than a set of quantitative rules that can be subjective to the individual doing the action. Moreover, rule utilitarianism benefits society as whole more than act utilitarianism does because it is based on society’s values. Therefore, neither act nor rule utilitarianism can satisfactorily answer the surgeon’s dilemma because they both focus on different aspects of a decision-making process, but neither has a broad enough scope to adequately answer the