Of the remaining criteria we might consider, only sentience―the capacity of a being to experience things like pleasure and pain―is a plausible criterion of moral importance. Singer argues for this in two ways. First, he argues, by example, that the other criteria are bad, because (again) they will exclude people who we think ought not be excluded. For instance, we don't really think that it would be permissible to disregard the well-being of someone who has much lower intelligence than average, so we can't possibly think that intelligence is a suitable criterion for moral consideration. Second, he argues that it is only by virtue of something being sentient that it can be said to have interests at all, so this places sentience in a different category than the other criteria: "The capacity for suffering and enjoying things is a prerequisite for having interests at all, a condition that must be satisfied before we can speak of interests in any meaningful way" (175).
Jefferson says, “We hold these truths to be self-evidence, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” (Jefferson, 80). He states how having these natural rights mean happiness to the citizens. We were created to use our ability to reach what we desire happiness should be. In “The Aim of Man” Aristotle has his own views when it comes to material and spiritual happiness. Aristotle argues that material is what an object consist of and this matter we could not live without.
“What is the highest of all goods? It is happiness.” The great Greek philosopher Aristotle developed the normative ethical theory of Virtue Ethics and here argues that happiness is the highest good and what we should all strive to achieve. This theory focuses on the kind of person we should become rather than the actions we should do or avoid and is therefore aretaic. Aretai’ from the Greek essentially means virtue, and this is the heart of Virtue Ethics; that people should concentrate on practicing excellence and being virtuous in order to reach happiness, which is the highest goodness according to Aristotle. Morality is not simply about avoiding the wrong, but is also about doing what is virtuous.
Summary of Utilitarianism Utilitarianism is a teleological theory as it looks at the consequences which also makes it a consequentialist theory. It focuses on the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Jeremy Bentham, one of the main ethicists that who believed in utilitarianism, believed that happiness is the greatest good. He defined happiness as pleasure minus pain. John Stuart Mill was a hedonist and accepted that happiness was of great importance and stressed that happiness is more important than pleasure.
Kant’s view uses a categorical imperative, in which ethics is based upon an absolute, objective, deontologcial theory, in which intentions are more important than consequences. Kant believed that an ethics should be based around something entirely good. He decided that the only thing entirely good in the whole universe is ‘good will’. Everybody must decide ethical decisions in a way in which they put themselves last, fulfill their duty, and commit only selfless acts. This may be psychologically impossible, as many believe there is always a selfish reason for any good deed, however Kant only proposed a theory, and
Did god determine that it is good to help the poor, give gifts, and preserve life? Or on the other hand did morality come about because of something independent of God. Meaning that the determination of that which is good or that which is bad came from something other than God and the reason that God agrees with certain actions is because the action is already morally right. The former of these two is known as the Divine Command Theory and the latter is the Autonomy Thesis. The clash of these two options is the Euthyphro Dilemma.
I believe that if there is a God and He is great and loves us, then He would want us to think of others and volunteer and those type of things more than worshipping how amazing He is. That sounds very selfish to me. So this is why you should do what you think is right and not because someone tells you its right. Because if someone tells you something is right, they can still be wrong. No one can decide what is right or wrong except yourself.
People also have the ability to think morally for themselves so morality is relative to someone’s point of view. The main point favoring the cultural relativism argument is that if there are no moral principles, then the principles can only be relative to culture. If someone were to express their opinion about the morals of a culture that they didn’t agree with, including what the culture already believed to be right, then that person would lose the argument without any question. This can be easily disproved because in one culture, not every person is going to have the same moral judgments about what is right or wrong and people can establish objective moral principles. A culture also can’t think of them as having the power to decide which is right and
Herodotus stated that everyone believes that the customs of his own society to be superior than the others'. Relativism, as stated by Socrates, has a deeper problem. Some social customs are merely arbitrary and when these customs face some issues, it is pointless to insist that one society's customs is better than another's. A second ancient
For utilitarian school of thought, an individual strives to do the most good, even at the expense of the minority. Utilitarianism and Kantianism find the basis of their differences in the idea that the ends justify the means. Utilitarian beliefs support this idea while Kantian philosophy rejects this. Modern ethics were devised from these two basic ethical beliefs in an attempt to combine the best aspects. Generally, the morally “right” action benefits the majority while affecting the fewest amount in a negative way.