Does life exist elsewhere in the universe? — One of the most fascinating and compelling questions, whose answer has eluded us since the moment we learnt about the cosmos. It could in fact help us understand our own existence. There are several probabilistic arguments that not only try to show the existence of life, but also the existence of communicative civilisations. Frank Drake formulated the Drake equation one of the most famous one of these models. Rather than evaluate and quantify the…
Dennis Prager, In the short paper “Equating Happiness with fun” discusses an essay he wrote arguing that happiness should not be equated with fun. Author mentions “as a friend once told me, I always assumed that if I could just accumulate enough fun experiences, I’d be happy,” He says that “most people believe happiness and fun are identical.” But they’re not the same because we all have a different definition of what happiness and fun is for example he uses “imagine a scene of happy people”…
If I had only five minutes to get to a job interview and I had to choose to press the button “Door Open” or “Door Close” for the two men thirty feet away pushing a large cart, I ought to press “Door Open.” According to Mill’s utilitarianism is “the creed which accepts as the foundation of morals “utility” of the “greatest happiness principle” holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness” (Cahn,114).Ethical…
Utilitarians believe that the best moral choice directly yields the greatest beneficial consequence. In some situations, a single individual’s happiness is the sole factor that drives moral choice. Balancing pain, or unhappiness, with pleasure, or happiness, is the basic formula of the utilitarian doctrine. Generally speaking, it is common in human nature to obtain happiness or a means of happiness specifically to keep one’s sanity in the chaos that is life; however, a person’s happiness may…
Growing up, we have all experienced the pressures of utility. According to Jeremy Benthem, utility is defined as, “the property in any object, whereby it tends to produce benefits, advantage, pleasure, good or happiness, to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party whose interests is considered.” Today in more modern terms, we could call it people pleasing. It is from this principle where we get utilitarianism, a property that is characterized by the principle…
Mayor Immanuel Hope have the biggest desire to continue Joyland’s tradition in helping the children of Sorrowville and allowing homosexual couples to adopt will greatly improve the lives of the aboriginal children in need. In this essay, I will discuss why Mayor Hope should allow the adopting process using the theory of utilitarianism, kathian ethics and self-interest. One of Jeremy Bentham’s motivation for Hedonistic Utilitarianism was the ability to improve very poor living conditions of the…
Summer is Good, School is Bad Naturally, the human population glorifies the idea of a simple and defined struggle between one easily adored front and one easily hated opposition. “The war of good and evil is mightiest in mightiest souls, and even in the darkest time the heart will maintain its right against the hardest creed”(Froude 13), yet beyond the darkness around the heart lies a depth and complexity previously unexplored, and behind this creed is a motive unbeknownst to the heart and it’s…
The utilitarian perspective considers the usefulness of an action by judging the utility of that action on whether it helps increase the common good. The phrase “The end justifies the means” is very common in describing this perspective because the end result is being judged rather than the morality of the act. In order made a decision based on a utilitarian perspective it first necessary to consider all courses of action before determining which one truly increases the common good the most.…
For John Stewart Mill, the resolution of the case study considers the outcome of the moral decision and involves the weight of pain against pleasure, calculus, and a consideration to higher, elite pleasures. Mill’s utilitarianism is supported and influenced by Jeremy Bentham’s philosophy, both of which call for the weighing of the pleasures of an action against the pains of those actions. Furthermore, in making a moral decision, one should use calculus by simply taking a vote of the polis and…
The Principle of Utility states that actions or behaviors are right, as long as they promote happiness or pleasure, actions or behaviors are considered wrong if they tend to produce unhappiness or pain. Or in simpler words, the Principle of Utility determines the rightness of acts by their effect on the total happiness. Mill claims that pleasure can differ in quality and quantity, and that pleasures that are rooted in one's higher faculties should be weighted more heavily than baser pleasures.…