PHIL 1104 Study Guide - Summer 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Utilitarianism, Philosophy, Ethics
PHIL 1104
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
Chapter 7
- Principles that are looked at are principles like “Let conscience be your guide”, “Love
your neighbors as you love yourself and the Golden rule.
- Utilitarianism - An act being morally right or wrong depends solely on the consequence
- Deontology- the view that certain features in the act itself have intrinsic value, it derived
from greek deon(duty) and logos (science).
- Deontology is when ethical theories that place special emphasis on the relationship
between duty and the morality of human actions
- Deontology focuses on the rightness or wrongness of action themselves, as opposed to
the rightness or wrongness of the consequences of those actions.
- Teleological ethics (Consequentialism) - The theory that the center of value is the
outcome or consequence of the act; if the consequences are on balance positive then the
action is right; if negative then the action is wrong.
- A teleologist would judge whether lying was morally right or wrong by the consequence
it produced
- One type of teleological ethics is ethical egoism which is the view that the act that
produces the most amount of good for the agent is the right act.
- Greek Philosopher Epicurus (342-270) sewen the seed of Utilitarianism and stated
“pleasure is the goal that nature has ordained for us; it is also the standard by which we
judge everything good.” According to this view, rightness and wrongness are determined
by pleasure or pain that something produces.
- Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746)- stated that “action is best, which procures the greatest
happiness for the greatest numbers
- David Hume (1711-1776)- introduced the term utility to describe the pleasing
consequences of actions as they impact people.
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
- Articulated two main features of utilitarianism
- The consequential principle states that the rightness or wrongness of an act
is determined by the goodness or badness of the results that follow from it.
- The utility or hedonist principle states that the only thing that is good in
itself is some specific type of state (for example pleasure, happiness and
welfare).
- Hedonistic utilitarianism views pleasure as the sole good and pain as the
only evil
- He invented a scheme for measuring pleasure and pain that he call the
hedonic calculus, which is the utilitarian view that we should tally the
consequences of actions according to seven aspects of a pleasurable or
painful experience.
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- Seven aspects are is its intensity, duration, certainty, nearness, fruitless,
purity and extent
- Bentham’s version of utilitarianism was referred to as “the pig
philosophy” because a pig enjoying his life would constitute a higher
moral state than a slightly dissatisfied socrates.
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
- His vision of the theory was called eudaimonistic utilitarianism,
which means happiness. He defines happiness in terms of certain
types of higher-order pleasures or satisfactions such as intellectual,
aesthetic, and social enjoyments, as well as in terms of minimal
suffering
- Believe there are two types of pleasures. The lower/elementary
include eating, drinking, sexuality, resting and sensuous titillation
- Argued that the higher or more refined, pleasure are superior to the
lower ones:
Act and rule Utilitarianism
- Act Utilitarianism- an act is right if and only if it results in
as much good as any available alternative
- A problem with act is we cannot do the necessary
calculations to determine which act is the correct one in
each case. A second problem is that it seems to fly in the
face of fundamental intuitions about minimally correct
behavior.
- Rule Utilitarianism- an act is right if and only if it required
by a rule that is itself a member of a set of rules whose
acceptance would lead to greater utility for society than any
available alternative.
- Rule asserts that the best chance of maximizing utility is by
following the set of rules most likely to give us our desired
results.
- Consistency of Rule Utilitarian- there always going to be a
way to increase happiness by breaking rules such as “don’t
cheat” or “don’t lie”
- Comparative consequences- we can not look into the future
to see the consequences of our actions
- Formulating Utility- only 2 variables to consider (greatest
happiness and the greatest number) and hard to determine
which is more important
Strengths of Utilitarianism
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Document Summary
Principles that are looked at are principles like let conscience be your guide , love your neighbors as you love yourself and the golden rule. Utilitarianism - an act being morally right or wrong depends solely on the consequence. Deontology- the view that certain features in the act itself have intrinsic value, it derived from greek deon(duty) and logos (science). Deontology is when ethical theories that place special emphasis on the relationship between duty and the morality of human actions. Deontology focuses on the rightness or wrongness of action themselves, as opposed to the rightness or wrongness of the consequences of those actions. Teleological ethics (consequentialism) - the theory that the center of value is the outcome or consequence of the act; if the consequences are on balance positive then the action is right; if negative then the action is wrong. A teleologist would judge whether lying was morally right or wrong by the consequence it produced.
