approach, John Stuart Mill defines utilitarianism as a concept were “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” In other words Mill said that an action is right if produces happiness and wrong if that action reverse happiness. He also stated that some pleasures are higher than others, and what produces greater happiness is the right thing to do. But, there exists objections to the utilitarianism as the individual rights are
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Peter Singer’s main argument in his essay “Famine Affluence and Morality” is that we, in affluent countries, have a moral obligation to give equally and substantially to those suffering across the globe. Thus, he would refute any claim that there is moral justification for people to care more about those close by than those far away. His Principle of Sacrifice highlights this idea: If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable
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This video shows a theory of ethics, utilitarian bioethics that is a branch of ethics and recommends directing medical resources where they will have a more lasting effect for good. It is used implicitly in some health planning decisions, such as the use of quality-adjusted life years and the concept of triage, but it is controversial in many other cases. Utilitarian bioethics is based on the premise that the distribution of resources is a zero-sum game, so logically medical decisions must be based
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In my opinion I believe that it does make sense to use utilitarian reasoning when deciding on how to fight a war. The utilitarian view is seen as being morally right if you can exert more happiness and pleasure than pain and unhappiness in that instance. Therefore when the U.S. Army had to decide whether it was morally right to attack the Nazi’s, they then evaluated how many people it would cause pain to and the amount of happiness it would also exert. By attacking the Nazi’s we were able to save
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Now that we have reviewed act utilitarian and how it applies to the Jim’s example, lets proceed to the second moral theory for this paper. Rule consequentialism may be seen similar to act utilitarian, because it has the same principle of selecting the action that its consequence provides the most pleasure over pain. However, main difference between the two moral theories is that rule consequentialism has one more qualification for any action to be morally good, instead of just judging the pure result
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In the chapters from Mill’s book, Utilitarianism, he writes about how people will be held accountable if they don't follow Utilitarianism and also what people are really looking for as an “ultimate ends”. One thought that the writes about is happiness as a way to an end. But what exactly is happiness and how do we measure it? We can’t scientifically measure happiness and it means different things to different people, but everybody has felt a sense of happiness at one point in their lives. I agree
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Chaplain Maloney discussed how pressures emanating from our obligations, aspirations, and situations affect a leader’s ability to formulate an ethical decision. Problems stemming from our perception and interactions with people, integrity, and career influence and amplify the pressures we feel. Knowledge of the these two areas, the ethical theories and the problems, and how they affect our personal decision to judge right and wrong are essential to ensure a sound ethical code. Understanding the
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Utilitarianism Utilitarianism argues that right and wrong actions could be distinguished by focusing on the consequences of those actions. From Utilitarianism perspective, result is the most important factor to consider when making decisions. Therefore, whether the motives behind the action is in accordance to principles or not are not as important. Even if the objectives are to be achieved by violating principles, it would still be deemed as the right thing to do. In short, as long as the objective
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Draft 3 I believe curiosity and knowledge are liberating and positive forces, but it’s the user’s intent with these that can cause harm and endanger people. The universe is the limit and many topics can be explored without causing harm. If harm is caused it’s the person’s or persons’ responsibility to fix it as mistakes do happen. If they do not, then they should be punished, such in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein when he fled after creating a monster that killed people (Sayre, 2015). Sayre (2015)
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Preference utilitarianism is one of the most popular forms of utilitarianism in contemporary philosophy. Unlike classical utilitarianism, which defines right actions as those that maximize pleasure and minimize pain, preference utilitarianism promotes actions that fulfil the interests (preferences) of those beings involved.[citation needed] The beings may be rational, that is to say, their interests may be carefully selected based on future projections, but this is not compulsory; here, the definition
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