Utilitarianism (Consequentialist)

Question 1

What is utilitarianism?

Answer 1

Focuses on the outcome for the wider community.

Utility = sum of pain and pleasure

Crane and Matten ‘an action is morally right is it results in the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people affected by the action.

Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that states that the best action is the one that maximizes utility. “Utility” is defined in various ways, usually in terms of the well-being of sentient entities. Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, described utility as the sum of all pleasure that results from an action, minus the suffering of anyone involved in the action. Utilitarianism is a version of consequentialism, which states that the consequences of any action are the only standard of right and wrong. Unlike other forms of consequentialism, such as egoism, utilitarianism considers the interests of all beings equally.

Question 2

how can utilitarianism be viewed in terms of?

Answer 2

Weighs the good results against the bad results. In contrast to egoism, does not consider individuals but rather collectives
Can be viewed in terms of pleasure and pain (hedonism)
Can be viewed in terms of happiness/unhappiness (eudomonism)
Also the ‘ideal view’: love, friendship, trust etc.

Question 3

What can be justified through utilitarianism?

Answer 3

Animal testing can be justified through utilitarianism. Considerable pain to animals but overall great amount of human suffering for great amount of people can be avoided through animal testing. (Crane and Matten)

Question 4

What are some problems with the utilitarianist approach?

Answer 4

Subjectivity

Quantification issue

Distribution of utility (interests of minorities overlooked)

Act and rule utilitarianism (Developed as a result of criticism of utilitarianism in its extreme forms)

Question 5

What is act utilitarianism?

Answer 5

Act utilitarianism maintains that an action is right if it maximizes utility; rule utilitarianism maintains that an action is right if it conforms to a rule that maximizes utility.

It has been argued that rule utilitarianism collapses into act utilitarianism, because for any given rule, in the case where breaking the rule produces more utility, the rule can be refined by the addition of a sub-rule that handles cases like the exception. Lyons (1965)

Act utilitarianism
Act utilitarianism is a utilitarian theory of ethics which states that a person’s act is morally right if and only if it produces the best possible results in that specific situation.

Question 6

What is rule utilitarianism?

Answer 6

Rule utilitarianism

Rule utilitarianism is a form of utilitarianism that says an action is right as it conforms to a rule that leads to the greatest good, or that “the rightness or wrongness of a particular action is a function of the correctness of the rule of which it is an instance”. In essence creating rules that apply to most situations such as considering if the pain of child labour outweighs the economic benefits. Creating these kind of rules assists with overcoming the problem of quantification.