Utilitarianism
Conclusion
I have evaluated some of the criticisms of utilitarianism and accepted Moore and Hume’s proposition that ‘good’ is indefinable because of its circular nature and the confusion of words that we associate with it, primarily the words ‘ought’ and ‘duty’. I fi rst redefined utility as those desires which are ends in themselves and do not undermine your most prominent desires. I noted that since utility is what one desires, and circularly utility is also desirable, one naturally desires to maximize utility. I defined three interpretations of maximizing utility: for yourself (g66d), for everyone equally (g88d), and for everyone relative to how genetically similar you think they are to yourself (g44d). I did this because there was no reason to choose ‘g88d’ over ‘g44d’ or ‘g66d’ to be utilitarianism so they are all just different forms. I have also established through analysis how to allow utilitarianism to include animals by weighting people and species by cognitive ability. The impacts of this onmaking abortion and euthanasia morally permissible. As well as looking at how utility can be maximized by illusion for those unaware of potential desires. I ha ve also cleared up some misunderstandings where people mistake ‘more’ for ‘maximum’ , as well as reminding ourselves utilitarianism is a concept for describing actions and not necessarily to be used as a guiding principle. Should you desire to maximize utility you could use utilitarianism to guide the construction of societal models and laws or just for your day-to-day actions. Finally, I looked at how moral luck can be addressed by distinguishing between moral intentions and consequences; as well as considering that, whilst actions may have a strong deterministic sway, there must still be some element of choice. Through alterations and addressing the criticisms I believe utilitarianism is a concept that can become socially accepted as morality. All ethical theories are means to utilitarianism. Because we have defined utility as human end-desires the creators of ethical t heories can’t help but be utilitarian. Even Kantian ethics can be constructed as simply a bad attempt at rule utilitarianism. Kantian ethics descends into rule utilitarianism because when building absolute rules you can build that rule to be more and more specific, defining the action of lying to your mother as different to lying to a thief. Rule utilitarianism becomes as situationally specific as it possibly can until it is virtually act utilitarianism. In rule utilitarianism courts may even allow exceptions where people are permitted to break said rules, or parliament may simply add infinite clauses to allow for a specific rule to almost every situation. Aristotle’s virtues are just human traits tending to bring about utility and his ‘golden mean’ concept is simply stating you should do whichever action is most likely to bring about the maximum utility.
Bibliography
Anscombe, G. E. M. (1968) ‘ Modern Moral Philosophy ’, in Ethics , eds. by Judith Jarvis Thomson & Gerald Dworkin, New York Ashford, E. (2000) ‘ Utilitarianism, Integrity, and Partiality ’, The Journal of Philosophy 97.8: 421-39 Bentham, J. (1948) An introduction to the principles of morals and legislation . New York Cook, C. 29/08/2014. How much is a year of life worth? BBC Newsnight online article ‘ bbc.co.uk/news/health-28983924 ’ Mackie, J. (1977) Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong . London
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