The Theory Of Normative Ethics

Utilitarianism, in the contrary, is based on the principle of utility or usefulness. Utility is what encourages an agent to act in a particular way (Tuckett, 1998). Utility can be explained as maximizing the good like pleasure and happiness and minimizing the bad like pain and evil, all leading to the greater good for all parties involved. It weights the consequences of the actions equally between the ones involved, and the ethical solution would be to follow the greater good for most if not all the parties involved.

From this point of view, it does not appear that risking the lives of the firefighters and the public to attempt to save one person is a valid moral decision. However, the utilitarian maintains the actions should produce the greatest overall utility, determined by weighing consequences, acts, rules, and practice (Hinman, 2013). The most common version of utilitarianism is always to perform the action that will maximize the greatest results or act utilitarianism (Hinman, 2013).

Utilitarianism is a philosophical theory. It concerns how to evaluate a large range of things that involve choices communities or groups face. These choices include policies, laws, human’s rights, moral codes,

To apply utilitarianism to this ethical controversy one has to evaluate which option would benefit society

These cases pose great difficulties for the Utilitarian. (Many (if not all?)have to do with what Jonathan Glover calls THE ACTS AND OMISSIONS DOCTRINE; this states that `in certain contexts, failure to perform an act, with certain foreseen bad consequences of that failure, is morally less bad than to perform a different act which has identical foreseen bad consequences.'(Thus it is worse to KILL someone than merely to LET SOMEONE DIE (or to let someone else kill them. Thus some Catholics would justify the bombing of military targets in The Second World War even when such bombing was bound to cause civilian casualties). The Utilitarian is committed to REJECTING The Acts and Omissions Doctrine; but this seems unacceptable. (Failing to send money to the starving is wrong, but it is not as wrong as sending the starving poisoned food – Philippa Foot).

Often, the time available for us to evaluate a situation is constrained. If a group of utilitarians were confined to a tight space without any means of a quick exit and a live grenade was to be thrown into their confined vicinity such that the only way to prevent their collective deaths was for one of them to jump onto the grenade and mitigate the explosion how should they go about deciding who should sacrifice them self. Ideally, they should evaluate all relevant factors to determine who among them had the least propensity for pleasure, and who’s death would cause the least pain. Although given the nature of the situation there isn’t enough time for sufficient moral deliberation. Though extreme this example is pertinent to moral action from the utilitarian perspective and offers a real problem for the theory. Beyond time constraints our capacity to account for all factors involved and their effects is limited. Perhaps the person that seemed to be best suited for sacrifice would go on to cure cancer thereby preventing pain such that it dwarfed the value of the others propensity for

Utilitarianism is a moral theory which seeks to maximize welfare and utility by defining any given situation as right and wrong depending solely on its outcome, yet while utilitarian thinking does in fact accomplish its goal of creating a universal moral code, it does so at the expense of freedom, oftentimes even going against moral instincts. For that reason, utilitarianism works well up to a certain point before it becomes unreasonable. The point where utilitarian thinking becomes unreasonable may be seen in the contrast between The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, the terrorist dilemma, the trolley problem, and the surgeon dilemma. The people of Omelas sacrifice the well-being of one child in order to give happiness to thousands of citizens,

A Utilitarian standpoint weighs the hedons and dolors in a situation. Ultimately it says that the most ethical thing to do

I also believe that act utilitarianism is preferable. I liked your examples on number two. I believe that every moral choice should be situational. If someone was to ask a controversial question then they make get the response “It depends.” I often answer questions with this statement. In my opinion a decision should made based on the situation. Scope is an aspect that is used in act utilitarianism, which applies to your example of the terrorist. The book claims, “The greater the scope, the greater the impact on overall utility” (112). When using scope of act utilitarianism it would say kill the terrorist because in the long run the people are greater in number. On a website addressing utilitarianism it suggests, “If it is clear that breaking

Utilitarianism is a consequentialist theory, as explained by the philosopher Mill. Given several choices, a utilitarian would pick the morally correct choice by using the Greatest Happiness Principle (487). By looking at whether the consequences of an action will produce the greater happiness for the greater number of people than another action would, one can

No form of Utilitarianism addresses the concerns raised about the intrinsic value and human life, it is a simple, easily exploited mask of morality. While the claims are to maximize happiness, with the reasons being that it wants to increase the aggregate happiness in general, the theory promotes with the inverse to eliminate as much unhappiness as possible. Rather than maximizing the good for all involved, one could easily just attempt to a limit the amount of people affected by whatever deed is done, especially if the deed would be considered bad if people knew about it. By keeping the action to a select

The most common use of utilitarianism is by way of consequentialist moral theory. Consequentialists believe that an act’s rightness and wrongness depends solely on its consequences and nothing else. An act is right when the algebraic sum of total utility unit

Utilitarianism is a limiting ethical theory that fails to grasp ethically reality. “The greatest good for the greatest number” is not ethically right in every situation. Although the majority would benefit, the minority will heavily suffer. Considering the overall consequences of our actions, the good may not always outweigh the bad, but this does mean that the good will be the ethically right thing to do. One may think they are “maximizing the overall good,” but in reality, harming many.

Being a follower of a theory that believes in the greatest happiness for the greatest amount of people, a Utilitarian would choose to save five lives over one every single time. Furthermore, the decision to pull the lever would be allowable as well as be the superior choice in accordance to the beliefs of Utilitarianism, in comparison with the other choice, which is to let the five people die and not do anything about

Ethics surrounds many emotions which are not accepted by morality as not important what is discussed about it at the moment. It is also regularly used in same manner as with morality. Ethical concern having largely taken place with friends, family and society as well, preparing a place for ideals such as social justice. Such Ethics able to exist or occurs together without conflict, like ancient Greek explanation of the good life as found in Aristotle and Plato.