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Utilitarianism - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Benefits:
      - Reasonable to link morality with the pursuit of happiness and the avoidance of pain
      - Natural to consider the consequences of our actions when decision making
      - Difficulties:
      - Relies on knowledge of consequences
      - Difficult to quantify pleasure
      - Some pain is good for us, some pleasure is bad
      - Utilitarianism doesn't show how pleasure is distributed
      - Doesn't consider different views of happiness
      - Offers a balanced, democratic morality that promotes general happiness
      - Doesn't support individual pursuits at the expense of the majority
      - Common sense system that is practically applicable to real life situations
      - They can be brought into operation in organisational sense rather that simply individual
- - - - Utility is a good/ bad basis for making moral judgements because:
        
        Utilitarianism has been progressive and the arguments based on these principles have been used decriminalise homosexuality etc.
        
        Offers pragmatism that works in the real world, whereas other ethical theories do not necessarily work in practice.
        
        Nozick's experience machine shows that if utility is understood in terms of pleasure, this is not the main aim of life.
        
        Preference satisfaction is not easily qualifiable.
        
        You can argue that other motivations such as duty, agape or telos represent better moral motivations.
      - Singer has moved closer to a more hedonistic view of utilitarianism, one that is focuses on avoiding pain. He argues that it is morally wrong for us not to donate to charities that work to remove poverty.