Stuart Price

This essay will set out to prove that Mill’s belief that our moral imperative is to maximize net happiness without accounting for equal distribution, regardless of certain individuals’ happiness, is incorrect. It will be shown that Mill’s argument system for deciding this is flawed, and that it lacks vital definitions that determine the basis of the argument. This essay concludes that without these proper definitions for happiness or pleasure, and without a way of quantifying these, it is…

Legalization of Medical Marijuana and the Doctrine of Utilitarianism Introduction Utilitarianism is one of the moral theories that is best known and influential. According to this theory, the moral worth of an action is mainly determined its contribution towards utility that enhances happiness and pleasure. It is mainly concerned with the pleasure that people get through the moral actions taken. The focus is on the greatest number of people. In the pursuit of this theory, then legalization of…

In ‘Personal Identity’, Derek Parfit presented the idea that being destroyed and replicated is just as good as ordinary survival. This essay will focus on Parfit’s argument of the Branch Line Case and will examine why personal identity matters, a critical perspective and will discuss an objection and respond to the empty question. Parfit argued that being replicated then destroyed resulted in the same outcome as ordinary survival. From the analogy of the Branch Line case, a human body was…

People act in benign selfishness. A person wakes up, showers, eats, brushes his teeth, and preforms other activities to take care of himself. If selfishness is focusing on oneself and acting in a way that benefits oneself, then everyone should strive to be selfish. The opposition would argue that if each person acted selfish then the world would be an aggressive campaign to compete and do better against one another. That belief is caused by the word selfish being unclearly defined. Benign…

Introduction In philosophy, selfishness is the hypothesis that one's self is, or ought to be, the inspiration and the objective of one's own activity. Egoism has two variations, descriptive or normative . The descriptive (or positive) variation imagines selfishness as a real depiction of human issues. That is, people are roused by their own advantages and cravings, and they can't be depicted something else. The normative variation recommends that people ought to be so spurred, paying little…

Annotated Bibliography 2 The scholarly, peer-reviewed article "Human Chances for Happiness: A Review of Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents" was written by Donald Capps and Nathan Carlin and was published in Volume 62, Issue 3, of the journal Pastoral Psychology in April 2012. I accessed the article through the University of West Florida library’s online database. In order to find the article on the UWF library’s website, go to the “Academic OneFile” database under “A-Z Database List.” To…

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.” This quote, by John Stuart Mill, about Utilitarianism embodies my ethical decision making process in a way that Relativism, Deontology or any other ethical system cannot. It is for this reason that I have chosen Utilitarianism as the ethical and moral system I employ in…

pleasure acts a method to promote the greatest happiness for the greatest amount of people (Soccio 350). This passage states that an individual ought to decide the most favorable pleasure for the majority of people. As utilitarian philosopher John Stuart Mills said “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.” Happiness in the utilitarian system is described to be solely…

happiness over unhappiness for all concerned” (Beginning Ethics). Bentham defined happiness is to be anything that causes pleasure and unhappiness is to be anything that causes pain. Bentham’s theory on utilitarianism is highly influential; John Stuart Mill, an English philosopher and economist, later developed Bentham’s moral theories on utilitarianism farther. Mill formed his ideas based off of Bentham’s theory. Bentham called the utilitarianism principle the principle of utility, and…

Analysis of Philosophical Traditions and Theories The word teleology is actually from the Greek word telos, which means by “purpose” or “goal” and logos, which are mean by “science” or “study”. Teleological ethics is referring to morality in the result or consequences of our behavior but not the behavior itself when we make any decisions or doing any things. From the perspective of teleological ethics, there is no right or wrong in human behavior itself but what deciding whether the actions or…