Utilitarianism
- Created by: elliethornton11
- Created on: 12-03-23 17:00
View mindmap
- Utilitarianism
- Act
- Jeremy Bentham
- the greatest good for the greatest number
- humans seek pleasure and shun pain
- commensurability
- felicific calculus: extent, duration, intensity, purity, fecundity, certainty, propinquity
- Rule
- J S Mill
- tyranny of the majority
- it is better to be a dissatisfied human than a satisfied pig
- strong and weak rule
- strong: never steal
- weak: steal to survive
- the only reason for a state to intervene in the affairs of an individual is to prevent harm
- Preference
- Peter Singer
- someone doesn't seek pleasure to gain end result
- eg marathon runner goes through pain when training
- eg someone wears heels for beauty
- Negative
- Karl Popper
- better to decrease pain than increase pleasure
- starving community need food not DVDs
- Social context
- 18th century theory to help working classes
- suffered from high infant mortality
- secular
- consequentialist
- relativist
- 18th century theory to help working classes
- Criticisms
- Nick Bostrom
- infinite amount of pleasure, infinite amount of pain
- Bernard Williams
- Jim's Predicament - human agency
- Daniel Dennett
- can't predict consequences - 3 mile island
- John Rawls
- cinema - cannot aggregate utility
- Derek Parfit
- world A, world B, world Z
- Nick Bostrom
- Link
- Strengths
- democratic - but can lead to tyranny eg Nazis
- not based on controversial metaphysical concepts
- consequentialist
- 'real term' effects eg scientist who adds fluoride to water
- Act
Comments
No comments have yet been made