When Socrates was accused of corrupting the minds of youth and forced to commit suicide, it impacted his student greatly. Plato came to believe that human beings believe what they see and hear without applying individual thought under most conditions (Kupperman, 2010, p
Utilitarianism is a branch of philosophy which deals with the concept of ethics and morals, as many philosophical theories do. Specifically, this theory states that ethics are determined by the social group in which the moral determination is made (Mill, 2002, p
Peter Singer View: In Rethinking Life and Death: The Collapse of Our Traditional Values, Peter Singer contends, "The customary western ethic has disintegrated" even as we descend into "a time of moving into our mental dispensation to the sacredness of life." The book starts with the story of Trisha Marshall, a twenty-eight-year-old woman, who in 1993 was seventeen weeks into pregnancy when a gunshot to her head left her in an emergency unit, alive, and on artificial respiration (Singer 1996)
Before the advent of utilitarianism, consequentialist philosophy emphasizes the self, in particular hedonism, but utilitarianism expanded the scope of consequences to include those to all society. Today, such scope has arguably been expanded further so that outcomes to the environment and other non-human entities is also taken into consideration (Driver, 2014)
The problem with utility, in particular when utility is extended to the broadest number of external entities, is that it can substantially infringe on one's freedom in decision-making. Spencer sought to reconcile the relationship between utility and freedom (Weinstein, 2013)
Virtue Ethics This ethical philosophy draws back from the thought and work of the ancient and great Greek philosopher Aristotle (Brown, 2001; SPI, n
Disability activist Harriet McBryde Johnson, who says that she would not be alive if this type of calculus had been employed notes: "But like the protagonist in a classical drama, Singer has his flaw. It is his unexamined assumption that disabled people are inherently 'worse off,' that we 'suffer,' that we have lesser 'prospects of a happy life'" (Johnson 2003: 12)
Normative ethics provides the ideal for socially correct behaviors. Normative theories are founded on an individual's principles of determining and differentiating between right and wrong (Rachels & Rachels, 2009)
Here, utilitarianism does not only refer to the useful of activities but rather a scope at which an activity produces the good. This theory accounts for the definition of good or happiness as that which is highly pleasurable (Gustafson, 2013)
This ethical system has been adopted by a vast majority of economists. The main argument fronted by the utilitarian concept is the greatest good for the greatest number (Renouard, 2011)
Utilitarianism, first of all, is a philosophy whose morality is based on the preservation of self, and is thus subjectively situated. According to John Stuart Mill, actions are morally acceptable and "right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness" (Fox)
As Michael Sandel notes, "The idea that justice means respecting freedom and individual rights is at least as familiar in contemporary politics as the utilitarian idea of maximizing welfare" (20). But here the utilitarian concept is complicated by two conflicting ideologies: on the one hand, there is the appeal to freedom as the way towards the "common good" or happiness for the greatest number of people (Halbert, Ingulli 15)
Because his philosophy is based on the subjective philosophy of Immanuel Kant, who also called into question the idea that man could measure himself against an external, objective and transcendental moral law, the Utilitarian is able to examine the facts in as many different lights as he can justifiably arrange. For example, Mill writes that "if [society] issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression" (Mill 13)
J. Toner states, without objectivity, "the whole process of human reasoning [may be] declared fallacious" (Toner, 1909)
It is important that the consumer perceives the process of farm-raising the chicken as humanely as possible. After all, how many people do you know who do not eat chicken? Perdue operates under the utilitarianism theory which our text states is "the theory that an action is morally right if the consequences of the actions are more favorable than unfavorable to everyone" -- or, in other words, that emphasize making ethical decisions as long as it benefits the majority of the people (Fieser, 2015)