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v. t. e. In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for the affected individuals. [ 1 ][ 2 ] In other words, utilitarian ideas encourage actions that ensure the greatest good for the greatest number. Although different varieties of utilitarianism ...
Bentham's Principles of Morals and Legislation focuses on the principle of utility and how this view of morality ties into legislative practices. [70] His principle of utility regards good as that which produces the greatest amount of pleasure and the minimum amount of pain and evil as that which produces the most pain without the pleasure.
Hedonism. The felicific calculus is an algorithm formulated by utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) for calculating the degree or amount of pleasure that a specific action is likely to induce. Bentham, an ethical hedonist, believed the moral rightness or wrongness of an action to be a function of the amount of pleasure or pain ...
t. e. Rule utilitarianism is a form of utilitarianism that says an action is right as it conforms to a rule that leads to the greatest good, or that "the rightness or wrongness of a particular action is a function of the correctness of the rule of which it is an instance". [1] Philosophers Richard Brandt and Brad Hooker are major proponents of ...
For example, Rawls' maximin considers a group's utility to be the same as the utility of the member who is worst off. The "happy" utility monster of total utilitarianism is ineffective against maximin, because as soon as a monster has received enough utility to no longer be the worst-off in the group, there's no need to accommodate it.
Libertarianismin the United States. Robert Nozick (/ ˈnoʊzɪk /; November 16, 1938 – January 23, 2002) was an American philosopher. He held the Joseph Pellegrino University Professorship at Harvard University, [3] and was president of the American Philosophical Association. He is best known for his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), a ...
t. e. Two-level utilitarianism is a utilitarian theory of ethics developed by R. M. Hare. [ 1 ] According to the theory, a person's moral decisions should be based on a set of moral rules, except in certain rare situations where it is more appropriate to engage in a 'critical' level of moral reasoning. Consequentialists believe that an action ...
Utility maximization was first developed by utilitarian philosophers Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. In microeconomics, the utility maximization problem is the problem consumers face: "How should I spend my money in order to maximize my utility?" It is a type of optimal decision problem. It consists of choosing how much of each available ...