The consequentialist nature of utilitarianism and its moral value placed on acts that produce pleasure and pain leads us to analyze the rightfulness or wrongfulness of the act committed. If the total benefits following an act are greater than the total damages, then the decision made to
Human nature may refer to many different aspects, and a few of these aspects are the behavioural traits of humankind, the purpose of human life and the importance of soul. Lotario was cynical about human nature while Pico, on the other hand, was more appreciative. Thus, both had different views on human nature. This essay will distinguish the similarities and dissimilarities of Lotario’s and Pico’s views on human nature. Thereafter, an evaluation will be made as to who has a better understanding of the nature of human.
Providing arguments for the hedonism and desire satisfactionist against knowledge being counted as a basic good can be accomplished by outlining their respective positions and then show that knowledge need not be a basic good in those systems. In this paper, I will first outline hedonism, then show how knowledge is excluded as a basic good. Then I will outline desire satisfactionism and show how knowledge is excluded as a basic good in that system as well. Hedonism states that a life is good for the person who lives it if that life contains a favorable balance of pleasure over pain.Since this is the case, according to hedonism, knowledge is not a basic good, pleasure is the basic good. The reason why knowledge is not a basic good is because hedonism gives it no value toward the evaluation of lives.
I think that to a large extent the conflict is misunderstood, but it is also illustrative of some larger, more glaring issues in philosophy. Aristotle describes the virtuous person as one whose passions and deliberation are aligned. The person takes pleasure in, or is not, at any rate, disinclined toward, doing what he thinks is best. The virtuous person, according to Aristotle, is superior to the continent person, in whom deviant passions are in conflict with prudent deliberation, and in whom deliberation manages to defeat the passions for the control of immediacy of action. Yet it is the continent person whom Kant calls virtuous and to whom Kant ascribes moral worth.
Meaning that the authority that was elected by the society had to be beneficial to the society; as well as the right and wrong actions depended on the effect that these actions had on the unhappiness and happiness of an individual. The Enlightenment was also based on logic and humaneness was coming in to the picture. First of all, Baccaria’s saw torture as inadequate criminal justice procedures, since torture was adopted as a common technique to determine whether an individual was guilty or innocent through use of pain. This in Baccaria’s eyes is deemed as useless. Since the tortured party can be proven guilty or innocent based on their pain tolerance, if an individual who has committed a crime and is being tortured however their pain tolerance is very high and they are able to take the pain they may be judged as innocent, however if and individual is innocent or guilty has a low pain tolerance and is not able to cope with the pain and confesses then it no longer matters whether he committed the crime or not, thus making
This theory is based on measuring happiness through pleasure and pain, and Bentham and Mill have slightly different views on how to measure it.Bentham states, ³Actions are good and bad according to the tendency they have to augment or diminish the pleasure or happiness of the parties whose interests are in question´ (Birch 86).Bentham is simply saying that depending on how much pain or pleasure a specific action gives a person determines how good or bad it is. Bentham argues that happiness and pain can bemeasured quantitatively. ³Bentham discusses seven aspects of a utilitarian evaluation: intensity, duration,
For a conscientious observer, this double standard should seriously cause him to question the ability of a consequentialist perspective to prescribe satisfactory moral understanding and guidance. By accommodating an agent’s moral feelings only when they are in accord with utility is indicative of a deeper failure to recognize that such feelings are often expressions of the agent’s own projects and commitments. Thus, to achieve an objective standard of right action, utilitarianism ultimately sacrifices the agent’s integrity by making right action irrelevant to those projects and commitments. The first part of my exposition focuses on what Williams sees as the reason for the popularity of consequentialist ethical theories, which is rooted in an illicit jump from thinking about moral kinds of actions to thinking about moral degrees of outcomes. The rest of my exposition explains how this jump directly leads to the
Even though each theory has its own unique way of portraying the act of doing ‘the right thing’, they seem to do just that. Differences Since I have determined the similarity between the three theories, let us look at how they differ from each other. Even though they share the common goal, the thing that sets them apart from each other is how each theory achieves the common goal. Utilitarianism bases its actions that produce more total utility for the group than the alternative, “The greatest good for the greatest number” (Boylan, 2009, p. 153). Deontology is similar to utilitarianism but on a more broad spectrum.
For example, in the case of lying, a deontologist would argue that lying is always wrong, doesn’t matter even if it holds any potential to creating a greater good. While the consequentialist would say that to lie is a wrong thing to do because it would cause negative outcomes as a result, however lying could still be allowed, knowing that it would lead to the creation of a greater good. While as for a virtue-ethicist would care less on just about lying, but focus more on what does the decision say about his/her own traits and character. So here are several features that make the theory of virtue ethics distinctive compared to the other
Touchstone is a character who has an individual opinion on the idea of love. His idea is unromantic, but practical. This can be seen in the following quote, “ by how much defence is better than no skill, by so much is a horn more precious than to want.” In this quote, touchstone implies that it is better to be cheated on rather than to have no woman at all and go on unsatisfied. This shows his practicality and also shows how he is quite selfish when it comes to love. “ he is not like to marry me well and, not being well married it will be a good excuse for me hereafter to leave my wife” , this quote illustrates his unromantic portrayal of love, as he is willing to go through great measures to avoid being tied down to one woman.