Ethics: Utilitarianism Overview

Disadvantages	Advantages
difficult to rate net pleasure	rational, practical
hard to consider all possible scenerios	impartial, inclusive
actual or possible consequences?	encourages empathy
what about intentions?	flexible: considers context
	recognizes all sentient beings

Utilitarianism provides a procedure to decide wethere actions are right:

considering all available consequences of actions:
- actual or possible consequences or intentions?
weighting pleasure vs. pain
go for the optimific¹ action.

Act vs Rule Consequentialism

Act Consequentialism:

Focuses on the consequences of specific “acts” in individuality.
Flaw: allows great and unnecessary pain and suffering if it enables more happiness (e.g., le Guin’s Those Who Walk Away from Omelas)

Rule Consequentialism:

Focuses on the consequences of specific “rules” in generality.
Tries to create these universal principles (optimific rules) with consequentialism: the consequence of making this rule, etc.

the option which has the most total pleasure after subtracting all pain from it: also called maximum net pleasure or maximum pleasure and minimum pain.↩︎