Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Utilitarianism is the best approach to making an ethical decision - Coggle…
Utilitarianism is the best approach to making an ethical decision
Jeremy Bentham Act Utilitarianism
The Felicific Calculus
Benthams method of measuring happiness
How to measure
Propinquity
Extent
Intensity
Duration
Certainty
Purity
Fecundity
Issues
Very difficult to measure happiness
impractical: you can't measure every action you take
Subjective
Benefits
Fair, objective
Appeals to human nature
Individual autonomy
Pleasure and pain alone must guide our actions
Penal Reform
Creating a fair prison system which would give a prisoner the opportunity to come back into society
J.S Mill: Rule Utilitarian
Pleasure is the only intrinsic value and should be followed within the law
Everyone has their own tastes and preferences
General goods means that it outwieghts individual issues such as drugs/drinking
Different forms of pleasure
Higher: Mental
Lower: intellectual/physical
Laws must be obeyed
We flourish along with freedom - on liberty
Peter Singer: Contemporary Utilitarianism
Minimise suffering rather than attempting to measure pleasure
Less subjective
More concerned with helping people, e.g., minorities
Effective Altruism
If we have enough to share with people less fortunate we should
Other needs should come before your own
Preference Utilitarianism
Greater good for society
Consider what is right and wrong by asking if it fits in what people would rationally prefer
Controversies
Singer believes that if a mother has hemophilia, due to the 50% chance that the gene will be passed to the child, one should wait till the child is born and if it is then born with it then it should be acceptable to abort it
Other Approaches which may be good
Kantian ethics - Duty and categorical impreratives
Do not use people as means to an end
Universalisation
Situation ethics
apply love in every situation
Unrealistic but idealist
Natural Law
To narrow in its approach