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Singer's utilitarian position on animal rights was known to Nozick at the time, however, and he expresses misgivings about this in Chapter 3 (footnote 11) of Anarchy, State and Utopia. b. ^ From p.27 of The Nature of Rationality : "On these grounds, one might claim that certain antidrug enforcement measures symbolize reducing the amount of drug ...
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 lead to the greatest good for the greatest number.
Act utilitarianism is a utilitarian theory of ethics that states that a person's act is morally right if and only if it produces the best possible results in that specific situation. Classical utilitarians, including Jeremy Bentham , John Stuart Mill , and Henry Sidgwick , define happiness as pleasure and the absence of pain.
Two-level utilitarianism is a utilitarian theory of ethics according to which 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. The theory was initially developed by R. M. Hare. [1]
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]
It assumes that the target utility is the maximum utility across the population based on adding all the separate utilities of each individual together. The main problem for total utilitarianism is the " mere addition paradox ", which argues that a likely outcome of following total utilitarianism is a future where there is a large number of ...
Lexical threshold" negative utilitarianism says that there is some disutility, for instance some extreme suffering, such that no positive utility can counterbalance it. [24] 'Consent-based' negative utilitarianism is a specification of lexical threshold negative utilitarianism, which specifies where the threshold should be located.
Utilitarian bioethics is based on the premise that the distribution of resources is a zero-sum game, and therefore medical decisions should logically be made on the basis of each person's total future productive value and happiness, their chance of survival from the present, and the resources required for treatment.