Utilitarianism

Music snobbery

is the worst kind of snobbery. It forces people who like something a bit mainstream

Utilitarianism

Some things appear to be straightforwardly good for people. Winning the lottery, marrying your true love or securing a desired set of qualifications all seem to be examples of events that improve a person’s life.

Utilitarianism

As a normative ethical theory, __________ suggests that we can decide what is morally right or morally wrong by weighing up which of our future possible actions promotes such goodness in our lives and the lives of people more generally.

Hedonism

is a theory of well-being — a theory of how well a life is going for the person living that life.

hedonist

believes that what defines a successful life is directly related to the amount of pleasure in that life; no other factors are relevant at all.

Hedonism

the more pleasure that a person experiences in their life then the better their life goes, and vice versa.

Epicurus (341–270 BC) and Ancient Greece

The roots of Hedonism can be traced back at least as far as __________ and ___________

Epicurus

held the hedonistic view that the primary intrinsic good for a person is pleasure; meaning that pleasure is always good for a person in and of itself, irrespective of the cause or context of the pleasure.

Fred Feldman

is a defender of a theory known as Attitudinal Hedonism

Attitudinal Hedonism

According to this theory, psychological pleasures can themselves count as intrinsically good for a person.

Attitudinal Hedonism

So, while reading a book would not seem to produce pleasure in a physical way, a hedonist may value the psychological pleasure associated with that act of reading and thus accept that it can improve a person’s well-being.

This understanding of hedonistic pleasure may help to explain why, for example, one person can gain so much pleasure from a Lady Gaga album while another gains nothing at all; the psychological responses to the music differ.

Nozick’s Experience Machine

One important problem for Hedonism is that our well-being seems to be affected by more than just the total pleasure in our lives. It may be the case that you enjoy gaining a new qualification, but there seems to be more to the value of this event than merely the pleasure produced.

Nozick’s Experience Machine

Many people agree that success in gaining a meaningful qualification improves your life even if no pleasure is obtained from it.

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832)

was the first of the “classical utilitarians”. Driven by a genuine desire for social reform, __________ wanted to be as much involved in law, politics and economics as abstract philosophising.

The Foundations of Bentham’s Utilitarianism

the only thing that determines the value of a life, or indeed the value of an event or action, is the amount of pleasure contained in that life, or the amount of pleasure produced as a result of that event or action.

Bentham

suggests that the measure of right and wrong is the extent to which an action produces the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

The Foundations of Bentham’s Utilitarianism

call his fundamental axiom as a requirement to promote the greatest pleasure for the greatest number of people, in order to act morally.

Consequentialist/Teleological

because the moral value of an action or event is determined entirely by the consequences of that event.

“end” or “purpose”

Teleological is based on the Greek word telos that means ?

Consequentialist/Teleological

If more pleasure follows as a consequence of “Action A” rather than “Action B”, then according to the fundamental axiom of Utilitarianism “Action A” should be undertaken and is morally right; choosing “Action B” would be morally wrong.

Relativist

Bentham’s Utilitarianism is Relativistic rather than Absolutist

Absolutist moral views

hold that certain actions will always be morally wrong irrespective of context or consequences. For example, many campaigning groups suggest that torture is always morally unacceptable whether it is carried out by vindictive dictators seeking to instil fear in a population or whether it is authorised by democratically elected governments seeking to obtain information in order to stop a terrorist attack.