Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is the moral principle that highlights the act that produces the greatest happiness for the greatest number, meaning it is a consequentialist position - only focusing on the outcome of the action. Unfortunately, the intentions of the individual has no moral merit when deciding whether the action was morally right or wrong, what matters is the outcome of the action and if that action generates happiness. Therefore, this theory has no connection to personal integrity or motives of…

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…

During the late 18th century, Jeremy Bentham conceived the idea that human actions are driven by the amount of pleasure one may feel by completing the action. Known as utilitarianism, it states that pleasure is the main motivational force of all actions. Ideally, a morally good action would yield an optimal amount of pleasure for the most amount of people. Bentham stated that pleasure is a product of good actions, and that the value of an action is based off of how much total pleasure it can…

Jeremy Bentham (1749-1832) was an English political philosopher and legal reformer who founded the theory of utilitarianism in An Introduction of Principles and Moral Legislation in 1789. Utilitarianism is a teleological theory derived from the Greek term telos, meaning ‘end’ or ‘goal’ because it holds that the final consequence of an action determines its moral validity, regardless of whether the nature of that intention. Bentham began with his definition of human nature, proclaiming that…

The purpose of this paper is to explain what happiness is according to John Stuart Mill in his book Utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is a component of a bigger theory known as consequentialism, which Mill views though the hedonistic perspective. In this theory, Mill has an understanding of a “ultimate standard of morality," which he believes to have two components: a theory of right action and a theory of value. A theory of right action is the idea that we must cause the best possible…

In his article “A Critique of Utilitarianism”, Bernard Williams attempts to dismantle utilitarianism completely but refuting the fundamental principles of which it stands on. According to Williams, Utilitarianism requires the abandonment of moral integrity and allows negative responsibility to have much more weight than it should. In order to fully understand all aspects of this dispute, a brief explanation of utilitarianism must be laid out. It is then that we are able to look at Williams’…

explain and review Ross theory of right conduct, how it differs from all the other theories, and how we can apply it. The main difference between Ross theory of right conduct and the previously viewed moral theories, such as consequentialism and utilitarianism, is that amount of pleasure is not the entire thing use to judge for what is morally right to do. The amount of pleasure is one aspect of Ross theory to decide what the right thing to do is, however pleasure is not…

If Bentham were to decide if this event was morally right he would say that it is. I base this assumption off of his theory of Utilitarianism. Bentham’s Utilitarianism can be explained using three main components; Motivation, Principle of utility, and Hedonic Calculus. Motivation explains that humans are motivated to avoid pain and pursue pleasure, According to Bentham, a human beings motivation to steer clear of pain and be drawn to pleasure is a moral fact. Human beings display the pursuit of…

Utilitarianism began as a movement in ethics of the late eighteenth-century primarily associated with the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham. The basic principle of Utilitarianism involves a calculus of happiness, in which actions are deemed to be good if they tend to produce happiness in the form of pleasure and evil if they tend to promote pain. As such, the philosophy is said to derive from the classical concept of hedonism, which values the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain. The…

This leading principle of maximizing the number of survivor behind the operation of disaster triage exemplifies the bioethical concept of utilitarianism. The utilitarian approach of bioethics states that decisions are made in order to bring the greatest amount of benefit to the greatest number of people [Mandal et al. 2016]. Under mass casualty incidents, the triage system prioritizes the most…