Advantages And Disadvantages Of Act Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is the most well-known consequentialist theory which are theories that hold the idea that actions are right or right according to the balance of their good and bad consequences (354). Utilitarianism states that we are morally obligated to act in ways that bring the best consequences. Following that idea you become morally responsible for all the actions that you did not do, but could have in order to maximize happiness, all the actions you performed in which you prevented others from doing that decrease overall happiness as well as what actions you ideally perform to maximize happiness. For all of the reasons above the Utilitarian theory is too demanding of an individual. With utilitarianism, one is always supposed to be thinking …show more content…
Happiness is the result of satisfaction of intellectual or physical interests related to the wellbeing (355). To a utilitarian, to make an ethically correct decision, they should choose the option that yields the greatest good to the most amounts of people. There has been much controversy about the principle of utility being the definitive standard of what was judged as good or bad. In response to the critics now there are two types of utilitarianism, act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism. In act utilitarianism, a person basically follows the true standards of utilitarianism where a person carries out acts that would benefit the most people with no regard for what laws society enforces. Act utilitarianism uses the Greatest Happiness Principle, which says in every situation; choose the option that you believe to be most likely to produce the greatest possible happiness or least possible unhappiness for the all people who will be affected. With rule utilitarianism, when a person is making a decision he or she, takes into consideration the consequences of adopting certain rules placed by society (357). In rule utilitarianism, happiness is not the only standard that an action should value; there is also the value of justice that is very …show more content…
Act utilitarianism is critiqued by many more than rule utilitarianism because people who believe in act utilitarianism due not conform to a society’s rules and they proceed with their actions with disregard with breaking any laws. I think that if more people believed in rule utilitarian it would not be as an extreme theory because people would have a general value of justice to look at while making their decisions to maximize happiness. Rule utilitarianism restricts certain actions that would end of up being morally immoral and therefore would help out the critiques of