Act Utilitarianism Essay

Utilitarianism is a moral theory that was originally created by Jeremy Bentham that he hoped would help people make difficult moral decisions. There are three main types of utilitarianism: Act, Rule and Preference. The different forms of utilitarianism all have different ways of helping people make decisions. Jeremy Bentham was the creator of Act utilitarianism and believes that people should aim to create the largest amount of pleasure possible for the greatest number of people through their moral choices. John Stuart Mill developed rule utilitarianism, he believed that they should create a set of rules that society should follow and apply them to the situation at hand as generally they create the most happiness but allow exceptions. Preference
Bentham believed that people should always be working towards helping those less fortunate than themselves, for example, if someone paid for all their necessities for a month and had money left over they would be expected to donate it to charity. Using different techniques followers of Act Utilitarianism would make decisions based on the amount of pleasure that would be created as a result. Another feature of act utilitarianism is the principle of utility, this is when actions are judged purely based on the amount of pleasure or happiness they create. The hedonic calculus is used by utilitarian’s to calculate the purity of pleasure that would be brought about, it does nothing to monitor the potential pain that would be brought about, this effect is known as the greatest happiness principle (GHP) and is a major problem with act utilitarianism. ”The greatest good for the greatest number” , Bentham believes that the pleasure of the majority the pain and suffering brought about as long as more people gain pleasure; this is called Tyranny of the Majority. An example of tyranny of the majority is gang-rape, under Bentham gang-rape would be completely acceptable from a moral viewpoint because more people are experiencing pleasure from the action than are experiencing pain. This also brings another problem into view, people having trouble putting aside their normal moral values to use act utilitarianism. People may have a difficult time using act utilitarianism to make their moral decisions because they are used to having their own moral code and values, if people don’t use the theory and revert to their own vales then it completely defeats the purpose of act utilitarianism, which is for everyone to use and aim to create the most pleasure. Another major issue with using act utilitarianism in modern times is that it was created in