Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is a consequentialist theory; it holds that we ought to act in whatever way has the best consequences (i.e. the greatest “utility”). For most utilitarians, this means maximising the good and minimising the bad.
Jeremy Bentham, an early utilitarian, proposed the hedonic calculus for working out the utility of an act. This method suggests that in order to discern whether an act is good we must consider the intensity, certainty, duration, propinquity, fecundity, purity, and extent of the pleasure and pain that it will cause.
The most significant disagreement between the different forms of utilitarianism is in what they think that the good and the bad are: for example, hedonistic utilitarianism holds that the good is pleasure and that the bad is pain; ideal utilitarianism holds that there are other intrinsic goods than pleasure: beauty and knowledge, for example; preference utilitarianism holds that the good is preference satisfaction (i.e. people getting what they want) and that the bad is people not getting what they want.
There is also a question as to how we ought to set about maximising utility. Act utilitarianism holds that we should consider the expected outcomes of each individual act before we decide whether or not to perform it. Rule utilitarianism disagrees, suggesting instead that we should follow those general rules maximise utility without worrying whether in this instance following the rule brings about more pleasure than pain. Negative utilitarianism holds that maximising pleasure is not important, that we should concern outselves exclusively with minimising suffering.
There are a number of strengths to utilitarianism: it proposes a practical method for working out what to do, it upholds equality, and it accords with out intuition that ethics is primarily about making the world better. It also, however, faces some strong objections.
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