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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.
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.
The Heinz dilemma is a frequently used example in many ethics and morality classes. One well-known version of the dilemma, used in Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development, is stated as follows: [1] A woman was on her deathbed.
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 .
Causal moral luck, which equates largely with the problem of free will, is the least-detailed of the varieties that Thomas Nagel describes. The general definition is that actions are determined by external events and are thus consequences of events over which the person taking the action has no control.
That is, if people generally experience more happiness following action X than they do action Y, the utilitarian should conclude that action X produces more utility than action Y, and so is to be preferred. [81] Utilitarianism is a consequentialist ethical theory, meaning that it holds that acts are justified insofar as they produce a desirable ...
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.
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.