greatest number of people. Utilitarians describe moral actions as actions that boost something good and lessen something that is bad. Virtue‚ knowledge‚ and goodwill are all good but they are only good if they give people a pleasurable existence. Pain is the only thing that is intrinsically bad. Utilitarians focus on the result of an act instead of the inherent nature of the act. An example would be an individual throwing their garbage into the ocean. Utilitarians would say throwing garbage
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optimize utility in the situation; this will make the utilitarian point always abjectly correct. Under this systems your personal intentions count just like one vote and your fate can be decided by other people. As an example of this moral theory in practice you can observe: the human sacrifices
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behave. The problems arise when the time comes to punish a criminal. There are disagreements over the severity of a crime‚ the mentality of the criminal‚ and the correct penalty that should result from that crime among other things. Kant and the Utilitarian perspective on crime and punishment do not coincide. Both philosophical viewpoints seem convincing in their own right‚ but not without flaws. One is simply the better way to reason through the issue at hand as it relates to society as a whole.
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permissible. Torturing can be a way of defending those people‚ but should be the last option. A lot of times in these scenarios there are no other options and torturing someone is the only way to get fast results before it is too late. I am a utilitarian thinker and I believe in the greatest good for the most people. If a lot of people ’s lives are at stake in a situation and can be saved because of one criminal ’s pain then torturing is the way to go. I believe that torture can be morally justified
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the result of feeling that Singer’s argument for animal equality in his paper ‘All Animals are Equal’ deserves to be taken more seriously than it often is. What I try to do is identify Singer’s essential argument and then defend it against some objections I have come across. The ‘irrelevance argument’ Singer begins by assuming that the ‘principle of equality’ or ‘principle of equal consideration of interests’ is a basic moral principle. The principle says ‘treat all people as equals’‚ meaning
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“What is Utilitarianism?” Ask a passerby to describe his personal morality‚ and you’ll likely get a complicated explanation filled with ifs‚ ands‚ and buts. Ask a utilitarian‚ and he can give a six-word response: greatest good for the greatest number. Of course‚ utilitarianism is not that simple. Like any philosophical system‚ it is the subject of endless debate. Still‚ for the average reader who is unfamiliar with the jargon that characterizes most philosophy‚ utilitarianism can be a useful tool
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beginning of the series were utilitarian due to his view of Cylons as lifeless objects. However‚ his reasoning becomes difficult to determine as he develops a love for crew members that reveal their Cylon identities. In this essay I will briefly explain Utilitarianism as understood from philosophers such as Bentham and Peter Singer. Secondly‚ I will introduce William Adama and the crew aboard the Galactica. Lastly and most importantly‚ I will provide examples of Adama’s utilitarian actions throughout the
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Most utilitarian theories deal with producing the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people. Negative utilitarianism (NU) requires us to promote the least amount of evil or harm‚ or to prevent the greatest amount of suffering for the greatest number. Proponents like Karl Popper‚ Christoph Fehige and Clark Wolf argue that this is a more effective ethical formula‚ since‚ they contend‚ the greatest harms are more consequential than the greatest goods. Karl Popper also referred to an
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SKEPTICISM PHILOSOPHY Skepticism: • It comes from the Greek word skeptikoi which means “seekers” or “inquirers.” • It refers to the critical attitude wherein a man questions different things including the well-known absolute truth or knowledge. • Note that skepticism (philosophical that is) should be contrasted with philosophical dogmatism wherein the latter is the direct opposite of the former. Philosophical dogmatism refers to an attitude wherein a man believes to have absolute
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pregnancy thus ending the life of the embryo/fetus prematurely. My ethical justification for abortion stems from a rule-utilitarianism standpoint. When using the rule-utilitarian consequential principle of ethics‚ we establish a set of general morals and rules in which we can apply to every moral question based upon our utilitarian findings. When this is applied to abortion‚ we can see that abortion is a completely ethical entity that provides the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest amount
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