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The ethical dilemma of utilitarianism
The ethical dilemma of utilitarianism
The ethical dilemma of utilitarianism
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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.
The government is watching you; there is nothing you can do that they will not notice. This is the reality in 1984 by George Orwell. Winston lives in Oceania in 1984 and works for the government; however, he begins to realize that everything the government has taught him is against all moral laws. Winston joins a secret group of rebels called The Brotherhood, the adversary of the Party, where he meets his love, Julia. Winston and Julia’s love is a crime, and so is belonging to The Brotherhood.
Utilitarianism is the moral theory that the action that people should take it the one that provides the greatest utility. In this paper I intend to argue that utilitarianism is generally untenable because act and rule utilitarianism both have objections that prove they cannot fully provide the sure answer on how to make moral decisions and what will be the ultimate outcome. I intend to do this by defining the argument for act and rule utilitarianism, giving an example, presenting the objections to act and rule utilitarianism and proving that utilitarianism is untenable. Both act and rule utilitarianism attempt to argue that what is right or wrong can be proven by what morally increases the well being of people. Act utilitarianism argues that
“To wing your course along the middle air; if low the surges wet your flagging plumes; if high, the sun the melting wax consumes”. This is the advice that Daedalus, the inventor from a renowned Greek myth, gave to his son Icarus when he was about to escape from Crete by means of wings that his father made. In order to control his wings, Icarus had to keep a constant distance between the sun and his wings. However, he eventually disregarded his father’s warning and filled with the exhilaration of flying. With the greed to fly as high as he could, he flew too high and too close to the sun.
I used to do martial arts when I was younger. I trained in learning all the techniques and forms and learned how to defend myself. When I was within the lower belt range I would spar with my instructors who were higher ranked than me. I wasn’t an experienced fighter and when I sparred with them, they would always manage to knock me off my feet. I would grow frustrated because of this but they always told me to get back up, to never accept defeat.
Morality and Utilitarian In according to the article there are many arguments about the gun control in the United States, it means that it based utilitarian thought. Steve Sanetti, he is the founder of the National Shooting Sport Foundations he has a utilitarian thought. As explain the article this founder is grounded in the concept to contribution to overall happiness. It means that the morality is based in the greatest act that should be done if the individuals are considered those action are good for them.
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.
Brave new world - Essay I look at this from a utilitarian perspective were the moral thing is to do the most good for the most amount of people. The individual, while important in any sense, is only relevant in terms of the community as a whole. It is very similar to the question of individual versus collective happiness. The happiness of the most amount of people is better than letting the individual decide for oneself.
In consequentialism there are also its difficulties, one of it is the subjectivity of pleasure and the difficulty of defining happiness . Sidgwick stated that "In practice it is hard to distinguish between higher and lower pleasures." Sidgewick also asks how we distinguish between two higher pleasures, for example listening to Bach and watching Shakespeare? Other than that, WD Ross "Single-factor" moral theories don't work because life is too complex. He argues that Utilitarianism is counter-intuitive.
Commonly, ethical systems are categorized into two major systems. The deontological approaches or normative ethical position which judges an action based on the adherence of the action to certain rules and the teleological approaches which judges primarily based on the consequences of an action (Hare, 1964). The Utilitarianism is assigned to the teleological approaches, as it does not evaluate an action by itself but by it’s
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
Title: Philosophy of Development Name: Jitendra Kuldeep Roll No: 13110044 Word Count: 1659
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
Decisions about right and wrong, good and bad imbue our day to day liveliness; Behaving accordingly as individuals, shaping liable governments and trussed organization, and making our society as a whole more ethical. I understand that decision about “right” and “wrong” and “good” and “bad” can be difficult, and is somethings related to individual ambience. Even though ethics conflate or confused with ways in which people may make choices including law and religion, Ethics provides standards for acceptable and unacceptable behaviors that guides one decision on how we ought to act in a range of situations. I believe I use the “The Common Good Approach” mostly.
