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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.
This is an incomplete list of advocates of utilitarianism and/or consequentialism This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources .
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. [14] Smart gave two arguments against rule utilitarianism.
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 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 ...
Preference utilitarianism (also known as preferentialism) is a form of utilitarianism in contemporary philosophy. [1] Unlike value monist forms of utilitarianism, preferentialism values actions that fulfill the most personal interests for the entire circle of people affected by said action.
The concept of measuring hedonic utility arose in Utilitarianism, with Classical Utilitarians acknowledging that the actual pleasure might not be easy to express quantitatively as a numeric value. Bentham, the early proponent of the concept, declared that the happiness is a sequence of episodes , each characterized by its intensity and duration.
Such a social welfare function, in turn, would be rooted in a moral theory of the good (such as utilitarianism). Social choice theory aims to understand processes by which the common good may or may not be realized in societies through the study of collective decision rules .