Eric Singer

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…

Buster Keaton and the decline of the silent film era 1 Silent Films Introduction. The mental image that many people have of a silent film is of a simple, black and white film, perhaps grainy and distorted in image, depicting a time long gone. With modern, dialogue driven narratives in film, it is easy to forget that dialogue is not the only way to drive a story, dialogue does not necessarily need to be spoken out loud in order to be effective, and that many actors had built careers out of…

Utilitarianism is the concept illustrated by John Stuart Mill as the maximization of human happiness. (He relates utility to the “greatest happiness principle,” a concept by philosopher Jeremy Bentham.) Mill describes happiness as “pleasure and the absence of pain.” Something of extrinsic value has worth only because of the value or benefits it brings to something else; something of intrinsic value has worth because of the value it possesses even while alone. According to Utilitarianism,…

The purpose of this essay will be to examine a complex moral case through the lens of the theories of Classical Act Utilitarianism and Rule Consequentialism. The theories will be compared and evaluated based on how they apply to the moral case. The situation that will ultimately be the basis to compare Classical Act Utilitarianism (AU) and Rule Consequentialism (RC), is the story of Jim. During a trip to South Africa, Jim finds himself to be a little lost and disoriented and in the wrong small…

The NFL has been the center of many ethical controversies. Many of these controversies come to the forefront of media outlets around the time of the Super Bowl. Advertisements that air during the Super Bowl have been associated with many of these Super Bowl related controversies. Many companies have even been known to produce advertisements specifically for the reason of creating a situation in which their ads will disrupt the normal family oriented flow of the Super Bowl. The choice and…

You could say parsimony refers to the concept of KISS (Keep it simple stupid). It is the idea that we should keep theories as simple and pragmatic as possible and it is an important cornerstone of the discipline of psychology and science in general. Parsimony means that if we have two competing theories we will use the simplest one. The canon of parsimony says that we should be frugal in developing theories by avoiding unnecessary concepts, again going back to the pragmatic. The idea…

John Stuart Mill's teleological perspective of Utilitarianism, guarantees that “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure.” (Mill, p.54) This ethical theory emphasizes that as reasonable beings that naturally interact and are compelled to settle on choices every day, how those choices are established—our…