Demographic-economic paradox

Utilitarianism is choosing the action that promotes the most happiness. This ethical theory is not the same as egoism because instead of thinking about your own happiness, you’d be thinking about the happiness of all. However, many people argue that utilitarianism is too demanding because it requires you to consider everyone’s happiness and do what brings the most happiness to the majority. For example, imagine that you work everyday, live alone and have no family or friends. If you were to give…

"The right action in any situation is the one that tends to produce the greatest possible balance of happiness over unhappiness for the greatest possible number."pg 130.It argues that the judge of one action is right or wrong, it depends on that we must look at the result that lead to the consequence of an action. People that they do not care about other factors, just because it leads to a good result, people can say that is the right thing to do. There are many different ways of thinking in…

Mill’s Utilitarianism is a seemingly simple yet quixotic approach to the issue of what makes a moral action. Mill believes that the goodness of a moral action depends on the amount of happiness it creates. However, critics find issue with this principle because if the end result of maximizing happiness is all that matters, unjust actions such as murder are moral as long as they maximize happiness. Despite his efforts of ameliorating this problem with his concept of justice, his use of justice…

In this situation according to Mill’s, “When given a choice between two acts, utilitarianism states that the act that should be chosen is the one that creates the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people.” The five workers have a higher utility than the one worker on the other track. According to mortality it is better to act in a way that benefits the most quantity of people, even if it causes harm to kill one to save five. Having to make a choice between who lives…

“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” is a short story by Ursula K. Le Guin. It was published in 1976 and is set in an ambiguous time period and location in a utopia called Omelas. This story discusses the idea of whether or not it is acceptable to destroy a small amount of people’s happiness for the good of the majority. The ethical theory behind this notion is utilitarianism: “that conduct should be directed toward promoting the greatest happiness of the greatest number of persons”…

In late August, the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute revealed that they had detected a strange signal that was 94 light years away from Earth. During the time of the signal’s discovery, senior astronomer for SETI, Seth Shostak, could only describe the signal as “interesting”. However, he rhetorically asks, “Could it be another society sending a signal our way?” Shostak, like many other scientists who had heard about the mysterious SETI signal, had hoped for signs of…

This includes the possibilities that Earth is a unique or rare instance, aliens lack the ability to communicate, and, somewhat darkly, intelligent life naturally destroys itself or others. Despite these explanations, the Fermi paradox not only casts doubt on the validity of the Drake equation, but the idea that the universe is biological, a concept closely related to cosmic evolution. If the equation is based on false premises, that there isn’t a natural progression from creation…

Is Happiness The Standard Of Value? The Kant and Mill debate regarding happiness being the standard of value, is very interesting. Kant deontological ethics focus not on the consequences of actions, but on the actions themselves. This is a little bit radical because it does not apply to every single situation. Sometimes you have to take action in order to find out the consequences of that action, otherwise you will never be able to explore new things if the action is never permissible. Some…

The search for the greatest way to reduce suffering and increase happiness has been a search that has confused and inspired philosophers all the way down to Aristotle and beyond. Each proposed a system that supposedly if implemented would create a utopia like world. One such implementation is utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is an efficient way that if implemented would accomplish its goal. However, it is brutal, enable the act of racism, and does not take into account the feelings of minorities.…

(Some) issues that arose from the full implementation of utilitarian principles to society were (many things) I couldn’t imagine to be real issues in our current society. The issue of very high suicide rates (58) was talked about but Gregory didn’t seem too concerned with this issue because the suicide rates, in other words, can benefit the society because the overall sum of happiness is greater. While I suppose this may be true, I wouldn’t think high suicide rates are a good thing just because…