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Examples Of Act Utilitarianism In George Steinbrenner

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Will the decision to turn the $2 million dollars over to the George Steinbrenner be beneficial or will donating it to a charitable foundation be better suited? This is the question we were faced with when reading on the concept of Utilitarianism. This question can be answered either way, but most importantly this concept allows us to make those decisions and determine the positive and negative outcomes of our moral conscience. With any decision in life there will be positive and negative outcomes such as: studying or not studying, blowing people off, or a difficult decision as a Commanding Officer in the Navy or Marine Corps. What Utilitarianism does is teach us the ability to make conscience decisions, while placing ourselves in that person’s shoes. …show more content…

With this two part concept each has its own individual positive and negative outcomes. With act-utilitarianism it is, “an act is right if and only if it results in as much good as any available alternative.” The positive in this becomes someone is always benefiting with either choice. However, a negative would be that the act puts the other individual worse off. An example is the sacrifice in the lifeboat and one living, while the other dies. With rule-utilitarianism it is, “…would lead to greater utility for society than any available alternative.” This also justifies with the life boat scenario as a negative, while a positive being the doctor lives for the benefit of society. Overall the negatives of Utilitarianism is justifying the killing of one for the large majority, attempting to receive the benefits and disadvantages from a situation, or if an act is against the law or

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Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that determines right from wrong when looking at the outcomes. It believes that the most ethical choice is the one that will produce the greatest good for the greatest number. Consequentialism is found in utilitarianism; consequentialism is largely thought about during war. When you fight for your life in war, you end up taking another person's life. While this may be good for your country, it is hurting a different country.

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As we know consequentialism is the focus of an action that does more intrinsically good than bad, one kind of consequentialist theory is utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is an action that produces consequences that are more good over bad for everyone involved. In order to produce an action that is the best one a utilitarianist would consider both long and short term effects. Two sub categories of utilitarianism include act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism. act utilitarianism bases an action on the overall well being produced by an individual.

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Utilitarianism tells a person to choose the option that will be of the greater good/ happiness and last longer. For instance, in the medical field if pharmacist has ten patients that need a specific pill to survive. However, the pharmacist only has nine pills. The only thing the pharmacist knows about the patients is that one patients needs three pills to live and all the other only need one to like. In this type of situation, the utilitarian choice would be to give the nine patients one pill to live.

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Utilitarianism is an ethical view that favors actions producing the “greatest good.” The use of utilitarian action is displayed in the case of Joe the janitor, when the doctor faces the problem of saving one hundred lives at the price of one. By killing a single janitor, the doctor would save a large number of people..

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Rule utilitarianism attempts to fix the flaws of act utilitarianism by being stricter on how we should make our decisions. However, rule utilitarianism has the dilemma that sometimes rules can come into conflict with one another. Suppose someone told you a secret and you promised not to tell anyone, but you later find out that secret will harm someone else. Rule utilitarianism holds that people should keep their promises, but also that they should work to not harm anyone. This exposes the main dilemma to rule utilitarianism, and if the rule utilitarian were to say that depending on the situation some rules can be broken, then that just leads right back to act utilitarianism and how it depends on each situation.

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241 Words | 1 Pages

In healthcare, Utilitarian’s believe in everyone having equal healthcare, or moral proper care regardless of their issues. A few examples of this are smokers who have bad lungs because they smoke receive the same care as non-smokers with bad lungs, or who also receive the same care as a person with a genetic heart disease, or a killer receiving the same care as a non-killer. Consequentialism and non-consequentialism involve making judgements about a person’s moral actions and the reasons behind

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The concept of Utilitarianism is simple to describe, yet difficult to conclude. All decisions involving Utilitarianism, are situational and depend on what option will bring forth the greatest amount of end-all happiness. As claimed in The Right Thing to Do, “If one of the two is, by those who are competently acquainted with both, placed so far above the other that they prefer it, even though knowing it to be attended with a greater amount of discontent…we are justified in ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a superiority in quality, so far outweighing quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small account” (Rachels, 2015).

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It states that an action which is deemed right is one that has not merely some good consequences, but also the greatest amount of good consequences possible when the negative consequences are also given due considerations. According to the utilitarian principle, the righteousness of an action is solely judged on the basis of its consequences. Classical utilitarianism determines the balance of pleasure and pain for each individual affected by the action in question as well as the amount of utility for the whole

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When discussing both act and rule utilitarianism, it is important to understand that both of them agree in terms of the overall consequence of an action, because they emphasize on creating the most beneficial pleasure and happiness in the outcome of an act. Despite this fact, they both have different principles and rules that make them different from each other. Act utilitarianism concentrates on the acts of individuals. Meaning that if a person commits an action, he/she must at least have a positive utility. The founders of utilitarianism define positive utility as happiness and pleasure and consider it to be a driving force of all positive and morally right acts.

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The Act Utilitarianism is Judges an act in terms of the consequences

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Unlike the previous theories, which either focus on the individual or a large group, utilitarianism focuses its decision making on a universal scale. Moreover, utilitarianism only has one decision criteria, consequences, like the preceding theories which also focused on principles. Weber defines this ethical theory as thinking, “to see the greatest good for the great number” (Weber 2015). Adding to that, it does not simply mean that it is ok for large amount of people to benefit while a smaller number is harmed. A utilitarian considers the amount of good or harm that is being done to others, so situations cannot simply be justified so quickly.

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Utilitarian suggest that we make our moral decisions from the position of a benevolent, disinterested spectator. Rather than thinking about

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The utilitarianism is common approach to make ethical decisions. The main point of this approach is that you have to make that decision which comes with the most utility. The utility in this approach can be described as „The good”, and the opposite of this is „the bad”. This means that in Computer Science you have to produce a computer programme or a hardware, which produces the largest amount of good , and during the producing phase, it makes the least amount of bad, for all who are affected: customers, employees, and even the enviroment. With the utilitarian viewpoint people can make right, and ethical decisions, for instance if you produce a programme which can make life easier for millions of people, you should not sell it for extremly

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Utilitarianism is a morally demanding position for two reasons, First reason is it theory asks us to do the most to maximize utility not to do the minimum and second reason is to set aside

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Utilitarianism is a teleological ethical theory based on the idea that an action is moral if it causes the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people. The theory is concerned with predicted consequences or outcomes of a situation rather than focusing on what is done to get to the outcome. There are many forms of utilitarianism, having been introduced by Jeremy Bentham (act utilitarianism), and later being updated by scholars such as J.S. Mill (rule utilitarianism) and Peter Singer (preference utilitarianism). When referring to issues of business ethics, utilitarianism can allow companies to decide what to do in a given situation based on a simple calculation. Many people would agree that this idea of promoting goodness

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