Examples Of Utilitarianism

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A Paper on Utilitarianism
Three of the main moral theories in ethics are Kant’s moral theory, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics. Each of these has its own benefits and pitfalls, most of which counter the other’s strengths and weaknesses. In this paper, I will be analyzing all of these differences while presenting my own version of utilitarianism that I believe to be the best and most promising theory, as well as applying it to a real world example.
Kant’s moral theory has two main principles or formulas: the formula of the end in itself and the universal maxim principle. First, the end in itself formula speaks about the duty that all people have to treat people as the ends and not just the means to an end. The universal maxim principle states …show more content…

Similarly, if everyone was responsible for only themselves, unless it could benefit them, then everyone in the world would be much harsher and much colder to other people. Utilitarianism is slightly different though. It is more about producing the best results. Utilitarianism states that it is everyone’s duty to do what would improve the worlds overall utility, or the overall well-being of everyone in the world. This can be split into two different versions: act and rule utilitarianism. Act utilitarianism can be defined as believing that an action is morally right when it causes the most good for the most people. Rule utilitarianism is the belief that an action is morally right only if it adheres to a rule that leads to the most good. This, similar to Kant’s moral theory, also has some objections to it. One of these is the absurd implications objection, which states that utilitarianism can be rejected because otherwise, we would have to accept the absurd implications such as if two acts both result in the same amount of utility gained worldwide, and the only difference between the two is one of them involves lying …show more content…

For that reason, I will apply my theory to a practical moral dilemma, the abortion debate. The first thing that needs to be said is that, according to my theory, if giving birth to the child would bring medical risks to the mother or child, there would be an obligation to receive the abortion. The same argument could be given for aborting, saying that if the abortion would harm the mother, it would be better to keep than to bring harm to one’s self. Now, the main argument against abortion is that a fetus is a human being that has done nothing wrong and innocent human beings should never be killed. A good argument against this was formed by Jarvis Thomson, which provides the following example: You wake up in bed with a famous violinist, who has a fatal kidney problem and you are the only person who can save him. So his people kidnap you and hook your kidneys up to his to help circulate the poison out of his blood. It would take nine months to get all of the poison out of his system. It would obviously be a nice thing to do to allow them to keep using your kidneys, but is it your obligation to help this person, even if you don’t want to (394, Cahn)? My theory states that it isn’t required that you would help this person. Sure, it would be the nice thing to do but you are not in any way obligated to stay this way. The utility this man would gain would be offset, if not negated, by the drop in utility you

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