Utilitarianism

• Bentham 


  it is human nature to find pleasure good and pain bad . It is human nature to seek pleasure and avoid pain
• utility 


  an action is good if it leads to the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people
• hedonic calculus

  1. how strong
  2. how long
  3. how likely
  4. how soon
  5. with it lead to more pleasure
  6. will it lead to pain
  7. how many ppl impacted
• mill 


  lower pleasures- food, sex bodily activity

  higher pleasures - reading and music - mental activity

  higher pleasures produce a higher quantity of pleasure but may not be preferred always as often many people of intelligence give into lower pleasures
• rule utilitarianism 


  an action is good if it follows a rule which maximises happiness - preset rue based on past actions
• strong utilitarianism- idea that rules should be followed no matter the situation

  weak u- rules can be broken if it maximises happiness - can become act util
• act util


  acting differently based on the situation
• mill pt 2


  not all action should be judged by the principle of utility- happiness is too complex to always achieve

  this solves the issue of calculation of util
• the harm principle


  people should be free to behave however a long as they arent hurting anyone
• Eval problems with calculation 


  we cannot know the future of an action and how much pleasure it will produce and we cannot know how long the pleasure will last
• Eval- consequences cant be predicted for all actions 


  we cant do the complex calculations under time constraints

  pleasure is subjective so we cannot complete objective measuring

  pleasure is also mental so harder to observe and measure
• benthams response 


  an action is right regarding its tendency which it appears to maximise pleasure

  we only need reasonable expectations of consequences based on similar past actions

  we can measure subjective feelings

  eg when a doctor asks pain on scale of 1-10- it is an indicator not an exactly true answer
• Eval - util allows bad actions


  you cant say whether X is right or wrong so you cant say things like torture is wrong

  this allows tyranny of negative power