utilitarianism

• Bentham: Act Utilitarianism

  • pleasure + pain motivate + direct our lives
  • morality is linked with observation + experience
• J.S. Mill

  • 'higher' cultural + intellectual pleasures, preferable to 'lower' physical ones - "it is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied"
  • happiness/goodness is in quality of life not quantity of pleasure
• strengths

  • gives a factual basis for morality
  • utilitarians have guidelines + rules e.g. Bentham's Hedonic Calculus
  • it gives us a way of measuring the moral worth of people - whether or not they seek to maximise happiness + minimise pain
  • utilitarianism is a practical system + UK politics is broadly utilitarian in character
  • if you ask people what they want, most will say happiness
• weaknesses

  • 'happiness' varies between people, so is impossible to define - some people derive pleasure from inflicting pain, this is not 'good' for the majority
  • it requires us to second-guess the future, but we can never be sure of the consequences of our actions, so any decision we make may turn out to maximise pain over pleasure
  • tyranny of the majority
  • Moore's objections to ethical naturalism seem to show there is something wrong with all naturalist ethical theories: the naturalistic fallacy