Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Examine the features of utilitarianism
which makes it appealing to many
- Introduction
- what is it?
- Teleological
- Consequentialist
- "Greatest good for the greatest number"
- Frances Hutchingson
- Politics
- Wider world
- Link to question
- Main proposers = Bentham + Mill
- Appealing to many
- 1st Paragraph
- Social and intellectual background
- Industrial revolution
- Poor living conditions
- Poverty - rich poor divide
- Bentham attempted to help the poor in society
- opportunities for all/Equality
- Welfare
- Elizabeth Fry's prison report
- Aim = Appealing to many + The whole society
- 2nd Paragraph
- Bentham
- Motivation of human beings
- Pleasure + Pain
- Utility principle
- Usefulnes
- Hume
- Happiness
- Hedonic calculus (Felicific)
- 7 criteria to measure up pain
- Duration, intensity, certainty, propinquity, fecundity, purity, extent
- Appealing to many
- Universalisable
- "An action is right if it produces the
greatest good for the greatest number"
- 3rd Paragraph
- Mill
- Developed Benthams act UT because Quantitative VS Qualititive
- Example of the sadistic guard
- Immoral acts can be satisfied
- Rule UT
- Bases on what is good - truth, beauty, love and friendship
- "the rightness or wrongness of a particular action is a function
of the correctness of the rule of which it is an instance"
- Based on certain rules that promote happiness,
such as keeping promises
- Higher + lower pleasures
- Higher = music, theatre, art
- Lower = eating, drinking, sex
- "Bentham failed to recognise the
deeper levels of human experience"
- "It is better to be human dissatisfied than
a pig satisfied; it is better to be Socrates
dissatisfied then a fool satisfied"
- Harm principles
- The majority can only pressure the
minority if it prevents harm
- Not all pleasures are equal
- "Human beings are not governed in all
their actions by their worldly interests"
- Modern applications
- Preference UT
- R.M.Hare (1919 - 2002)
- Hare said that the preferences of the individual
should always be taken into account
- It suggests that, when deciding what the right thing to
do, then 'pleasure' is replaced by 'best interests'
- Negative UT
- Karl Popper (1902 - 1994)
- The right thing to do is to promote the
least evil or harm
- Reduce the amount of suffering
for the greatest number
- Prima Facie
- Conclusion