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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. The theory was initially developed by R. M. Hare. [1]
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 .
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 .
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]
Altruism is often seen as a form of consequentialism, as it indicates that an action is ethically right if it brings good consequences to others. [7] Altruism may be seen as similar to utilitarianism, however an essential difference is that the latter prescribes acts that maximize good consequences for all of society, while altruism prescribes maximizing good consequences for everyone except ...
In a series of books, R.M. Hare (who introduced the term into philosophical literature [2]) made moral supervenience the basis of his derivation of a version of utilitarianism, but this was actually a universal applicability condition combined with the criterion that the universalized behavior would not produce a greater balance of satisfied ...
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. [1]
One common view is to classify consequentialism, together with virtue ethics, under a broader label of "teleological ethics". [7] [1] Proponents of teleological ethics (Greek: telos, 'end, purpose' + logos, 'science') argue that the moral value of any act consists in its tendency to produce things of intrinsic value, [1] meaning that an act is ...