Utilitarianism deems every act that produces overall happiness as good so according to this there is no act that is immoral or. For example, if molesting a child produces the greatest happiness, then it is right to molest a child. Suppose a group of paedophiles only find and molest abandoned children. Only the child suffers pain and no one else knows about their activities. From these actions they gain a lot of happiness. Therefore, according to utilitarianism more happiness is produced by molesting the child instead of not molesting the child, therefore this is the right act to do according to this theory. This sort of logic is clearly absurd and immoral and contradictory to the principle of utility because if people were to then find out it would result in the reduction of …show more content…
However the theory would then still imply that if no one else were to know about this apart from the paedophiles, then it would be the right thing to molest children as it increases utility according to utilitarianism. But then this means that utilitarianism doesn’t acknowledge individual rights because if people dont find out about paedophilic activities then the act would be deemed right according to utilitarianism. Therefore this example proves that not every act that brings about happiness is morally acceptable and that utilitarianism promotes the complete disregard of peoples rights for the sake of happiness . This also shows that the utilitarian standard of determining what is morally good based on happiness alone is wrong and undermines the rights of individuals. Utilitarianism fails to acknowledge individual rights because it doesn’t place limitations on immoral actions that may produce the greatest amount of happiness.