Key Concepts Of Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that is more interested in consequences than intent. An act is considered right if it’s good outcomes is more than the bad outcomes. People are expected to act in a way that will result in the greatest possible amount of well-being. Utilitarianism became a well-defined ethical theory during the eighteenth century.

Utilitarianism can be described as a theory of ethics because it tells good or bad and also right or wrong. But some of the key concepts of utilitarianism talk about the conduct of public life. This makes the theory political.

Utilitarianism key idea is an action is morally right or wrong depending on their positive or negative effects. The only effects important actions are positive and negative

Instead, utilitarians think that what makes a morality justifiable is its positive contribution to human (and perhaps non-human) beings.

Utilitarianism is based on the fact that pleasure and happiness are valuable while pain and suffering are naturally not valuable. Also anything else has value only in its happy or positive outcomes (i.e. "instrumental", or as means to an end). This focus on happiness or pleasure as the ultimate end of moral decisions, makes it a type of Hedonism (sometimes known as Hedonistic Utilitarianism).

Utilitarians support equality through equal consideration of interests, and they reject any arbitrary isolations such as to who is worthy of concern and who is not, and any form of discrimination between individuals. However, utilitarianism agree to the idea of declining marginal utility, which recognizes that the same thing furthers the interests of a well-off individual to a lesser degree than it would the interests of a less well-off individual.

From the eighteenth century to date, six authors have significantly contributed to the utilitarianism ethical

These include; Consequentialism, welfarism, Individualism, aggregation and maximization.

Consequentialism

This is the view the good or bad of an action depends entirely on the outcomes or consequences of that act. This is technically referred to as ‘Teleological’. For instance, if you tell a lie, it will only be considered a bad or negative action if that lie has harmful or bad effects. Otherwise, that lie will not be considered wrong.

This utilitarian feature is of the view that, an act could be considered right or wrong if the effects of that act yields right or wrong consequences. For instance, there is a consequentialist claim that an act is right only if the outcomes of that act is as good as any other alternative act. The means is usually not considered so long as it results to a positive consequence. Consequentialism tends to justify the means by probably right means.

Welfarism

Welfarism goes with views that how good or bad the outcomes of a action is depends solely on facts about well-being, or welfare. That is how much happiness is