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[58] He argues that one of the main reasons for introducing rule utilitarianism was to do justice to the general rules that people need for moral education and character development and he proposes that "a difference between act-utilitarianism and rule-utilitarianism can be introduced by limiting the specificity of the rules, i.e., by ...
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 ...
Negative utilitarianism is a form of negative consequentialism that can be described as the view that people should minimize the total amount of aggregate suffering, or that they should minimize suffering and then, secondarily, maximize the total amount of happiness.
Accordingly, people have an obligation to act upon principles that a community of rational agents would accept as laws. [14] In such a community, each individual would only accept maxims that can govern every member of the community without treating any member merely as a means to an end. [ 34 ]
The demandingness objection is a common [1] [2] argument raised against utilitarianism and other consequentialist ethical theories. The consequentialist requirement that we maximize the good impartially seems to this objection to require us to perform acts that we would normally consider optional.
Utilitarianism is an 1861 essay written by English philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill, considered to be a classic exposition and defense of utilitarianism in ethics. It was originally published as a series of three separate articles in Fraser's Magazine in 1861 before it was collected and reprinted as a single work in 1863. [ 1 ]
Proportionalism is an ethical theory that lies between consequential theories and deontological theories. [1] Consequential theories, like utilitarianism, say that an action is right or wrong, depending on the consequences it produces, but deontological theories, such as Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative, say that actions are either intrinsically right or intrinsically wrong.
A specific type of consequentialism is utilitarianism, which says that the consequences that matter are those that affect aggregate well-being. [6] Consequentialism is broader than utilitarianism in that consequentialism can say that the value of outcomes depend on other things than well-being; for example, justice, fairness, and equality, [7] or in that it can say that the value of outcomes ...