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Pros And Cons Of Act Utilitarianism

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Utilitarianism is a form of consequential theory and has two central branches that I will define and apply to this engineering and environmental disaster. This theory depends only on the consequences of decisions, through consequentialist theories pleasure is seen as the most important outcome. It tests which of the available options would create the most happiness and the least unhappiness. The morally responsible choices are the ones that create the most net pleasure meaning that as long as the positives and pleasures outweigh the negatives and displeasures. One of the key tenants of measuring the positives is to determine the amount of people who will experience pleasure and the depth or intensity of said pleasure. The same goes for measuring …show more content…

Act Utilitarianism requires moral entities to determine the consequences of every individual choice they make, which can seem general. Rule Utilitarianism tries to expand consequentialist theories to see if they are universal or effective in practice. Rule utilitarianism is different because it treats consequences as rules and then determines if these rules would actually make for a more morally responsible world. The way I try to model these to types of utilitarianism is to compare it to automotive law. Act Utilitarianism would be to tell every single person to make driving decisions that would create the most net good on the road meaning safety. Rule Utilitarianism would require drivers to uphold the law by stopping at stop signs or red lights even if it would be safe and create no negative impact. Act would be the equivalent of yield sign on the road telling drivers to check on coming traffic and make their safety decisions based on the situation. Whereas Rule Utilitarianism would be the equivalent of a stop sign asking drivers to make the safest choice of following the rules that all others drivers

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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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The difference between Act Utilitarianism and Rule Utilitarianism is the way they evaluate actions and its consequences. This means that Act Utilitarianism evaluate actions by the consequences of the act by itself, while Rule Utilitarianism evaluate the effect of any action by the amount of good or bad consequences that it cause in general. However, both are based principally in the consequences of the actions either general or specific. In my opinion, the better ethical theory is Rule Utilitarianism because it judge the actions based on the consequences it bring to society in general, and not just the consequences it brings itself.

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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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846 Words | 4 Pages

A rule utilitarian believes that an action is moral if it follows a rule that leads, generally, to greatest good. Additionally, a eudaimonistic utilitarian believes that there are multiple goods, or happinesses, some of which are greater than others. Contrarily, an act utilitarian believes an action is moral only if it produces the maximum amount of pleasure, with the minimum amount of

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Both act-utilitarianism and rule-utilitarianism have unique and very similar flaws. The first

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1217 Words | 5 Pages

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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For rule utilitarianism, it tells us to follow a set of rules that maximizes utility such as “keep your promise, otherwise you will get hurt”. The rules permit us to account for obligations to specific people. If I apply rule utilitarianism to the dilemma facing George, he will get a different result from act utilitarianism. First, if George accepts a rule that conditions that parents have the responsibility to take care of their children, George saves his family will not be violated of his duties as a

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An act utilitarian would not cheat on a test because if they cheat once then they will continue cheating based on their actions. Rule utilitarianism is less plausible because there are conflicting rules, rules in an ideal set might conflict with another. If you make a promise to not tell where a friend is and someone else asks where that friend is, should you keep promise or tell the truth? You can't satisfy one rule without breaking the other. Another issue is the rule worship problem, upholding a rule even though it doesn’t satisfy its intended consequences.

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5. The two similarities between act utilitarian and rule utilitarian is that they both want good and lest harm for the greatest number of people. The differences is Act utilitarian wants the most good or least harm for the greatest number of people directly affected by the decision. That the act will result in in the best or least harmful consequences for the specific act.

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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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Hence, a rule utilitarian applies the Principle of Utility to moral rules, while an act utilitarian applies the Principle of Utility to individual moral actions[11]. The good point of Rule Utilitarianism is it follows “moral rules” in which there are exceptions. In case of debate on the right to remain silent in Vietnam, like Act Utilitarianism, it will support the measure because we cannot sacrifice the right of some people to protect the interests of another group, but in case of that sacrifice is necessary for the whole society, we can do it as

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1524 Words | 7 Pages

So, what is act utilitarianism? Act utilitarianism is best defined as a value of consequences of the act when it is determining whether it is the right act and if it brings about the greatest good consequences for all. In addition, for most act utilitarian’s, they do think that even though telling the truth is a moral action , but if it brings about the greatest good for everyone from immoral acts, it can be considered as ethically moral or immoral in the eyes of the law based on situations. From the observations of the movie, the Island, an act utilitarian would view this movie based on the different situations that takes place. As an example from the movie, the Island, Jordan two delta, known as Scarlett Johansson which is the clone, in the outer world has made the right act based on the consequences in which she diversified the mind of the working policemen by saying “open the door “while holding up a gun and the military officer, Albert Laurent shoots two of the working policemen in the isolation of the outer world in order to save the lives of the lottery winner people who is caught inside the door while suffocating to death.

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The variation between the two is that act utilitarianism states that an action is correct only when it brings good to the situation verses any other choice you could have made. Rule utilitarianism states that an action is correct if we followed the given rules that were made in order to have the greatest chance of achieving the most amount of

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866 Words | 4 Pages

The three different versions of Utilitarianism are, Act, Rule, and Preference Utilitarianism. Act Utilitarianism states that a person’s act is right if and only if it produces as many

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However, this is much more complex than the seemingly practical to use act utilitarianism. Assigning different ‘levels’ to different pleasures and pains can take up a considerable amount of time, when sometimes a quick decision is necessary. Furthermore, with both act and rule utilitarianism, the pleasure and pain of every potential situation must be calculated to decide the most moral course of action. However, it is impossible for one person, or even a group of people, to perfectly calculate every potential outcome – many situations will have extremely different consequences to what was originally predicted. Moreover, especially in larger companies, it is hard to measure far-reaching

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