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Utilitarianism is a version of consequentialism, which states that the consequences of any action are the only standard of right and wrong. Unlike other forms of consequentialism, such as egoism and altruism, egalitarian utilitarianism considers either the interests of all humanity or all sentient beings equally.
Two-level utilitarianism is virtually a synthesis of the opposing doctrines of act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism. Act utilitarianism states that in all cases the morally right action is the one which produces the most well-being, whereas rule utilitarianism states that the morally right action is the one that is in accordance with a ...
Consequentialist ethics, which hold that the rightness of acts depends only on their consequences. [11] The paradigmatic consequentialist theory is utilitarianism , which classically holds that whether an act is morally right depends on whether it maximizes net aggregated psychological wellbeing.
The basic ethical debate is often presented as a matter of deontological versus utilitarian viewpoint. A utilitarian thinker may believe, when the overall outcome of lives saved due to torture are positive, torture can be justified; the intended outcome of an action is held as the primary factor in determining its merit or morality.
It is also contrasted with both virtue ethics, which focuses on the character of the agent rather than on the nature or consequences of the act (or omission) itself, and pragmatic ethics, which treats morality like science: advancing collectively as a society over the course of many lifetimes, such that any moral criterion is subject to revision.
In ethics, Smart was a defender of utilitarianism. Specifically, he defended "extreme", or act utilitarianism , as opposed to "restricted", or rule utilitarianism . The distinction between these two types of ethical theory is explained in his essay Extreme and Restricted Utilitarianism .
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A utilitarian view asserts that it is obligatory to steer to the track with one man on it. According to classical utilitarianism, such a decision would be not only permissible, but, morally speaking, the better option (the other option being no action at all). [15] This fact makes diverting the trolley obligatory.