This is a 38/40 OCR A-Level Religious Studies - Ethics essay on the topic of Utilitarianism. It weighs up act Utilitarianism and its effectiveness in moral decision making, topics that appear in this essay are:
- Act Utilitarianism
- Rule Utilitarianism
- Jeremy Bentham
- John Stuart Mill
- He...
Utilitarianism essay:
In moral decision-making, act utilitarianism is the most useful form of utilitarianism. Discuss
Bentham formulated Act Utilitarianism on the grounds of establishing a moral code for right and
wrong. He combined the thoughts of Hume’s utility and Hutcheson’s happiness to create the maxim
“the greatest happiness for the greatest number”. His form of utilitarianism provides the best
approach to moral decision making due to its personal, yet absolute nature and it is taking situations
on a case-by-case basis, rather than sweeping laws. While there are issues with the Hedonic Calculus
and Bentham’s lack of differentiating between higher and lower pleasures, and Mill’s rule
utilitarianism, Act utilitarianism still is more useful as it provides a personal approach.
Bentham uses the Hedonic calculus to calculate whether something is morally good or not. He has
seven principles within this calculus, being duration, intensity, fecundity, and many more. This allows
an in-depth approach to moral decision making and ensures that each situation is judged in detail
and fairly in order to ensure that the decision made maximised pleasure for the greatest number of
people and comes to the conclusion that something is either absolutely right or absolutely wrong.
This can be useful for complex ethical dilemmas such as abortion or euthanasia, judgements of
which cannot be made quickly or easily. Its absolutist nature also provides usefulness as the
judgement made is whether something is absolutely right or wrong and does not leave leeway for
interpretation, making this form of utilitarianism sound and convincing. This may make act
utilitarianism the most useful form of utilitarianism as it shows how ethical dilemmas are looked at
in detail, through every nature of the situation, to allow for a fair and detailed conclusion.
On the other hand, many ethicists may argue that act utilitarianism is not the most useful form of
utilitarianism due to the hedonic calculus and the teleological nature of the ethical theory. Although
the Hedonic Calculus having seven parts makes it detailed, it may also make decisions lengthy and
complex, perhaps over complicating situations that do not need to be made complicated. This
implies that it is not the best form of utilitarianism as it is lengthy and someone will not know how to
apply it from the top of their head, therefore it is not applicable to most modern day, daily life, split
second decisions. In addition to this, this theory is teleological, meaning it relies on the
consequences rather than the intentions of actions to judge their morality. This relies upon someone
predicting the consequence of an action and this holds many issues. These issues can be observed
through someone eating a cupcake, they thought it would maximise their utility through the cake
being tasty, however it was disgusting and now they have made a decision based off act
utilitarianism that was not right. Through these counter arguments, one may believe that act
utilitarianism is not very useful as the process is lengthy and not always accurate as it relies upon
predictions.
On the other hand, act utilitarianism is very applicable to everyday situations as it tackles each
individual situation one at a time. This allows for personal, accurate judgements to be made. Its
absolutist nature of the decision either being right or wrong also makes it a simply ethical theory to
follow and does not allow for interpretations. This may be useful especially in modern day moral
decision making when it comes to having such a personal approach to the ethical decisions, looking
at each situation separately on a case-by-case basis, meaning every situation is fairly judged. This can
be compared to rule utilitarianism’s generalist approach, simply applying the two main principles
without individually addressing each situation. This may therefore mean that act utilitarianism is the
most useful form of utilitarianism as it is personal and concludes with certainty.
On the other hand, one may argue that Bentham’s lack of differentiation between higher and lower
pleasures makes act utilitarianism not the most useful form as it may lead to dangerous
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