Pros And Cons Of Utilitarianism

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A student needs an A in Introduction to Ethics in order to gain admission into law school. In order to assure this, he decides to offer his professor $500 in order to raise his grade from a C to an A, allowing him to be admitted According to utilitarian Stuart Mill, the idea of higher-level pleasures are those that give more long-term pleasure, while requiring a significant amount of pain in order to affirm the true value of the pleasure. These, in turn, are most likely to give us long term happiness. Since humans are more complex beings, part of what separates them from an animalistic existence is having these higher-level pleasures because it takes more to make us truly happy.

The student desires the acceptance to law school and aspires …show more content…

Utilitarians believe that actions that are good are those that maximize pleasure and minimize pain, en route to achieving true happiness by having that distinct action serve as a means to achieving true happiness. Additionally, just because someone would describe an action or an idea as “good” does not mean that it morally good or correct. To add morality in the equation, one must consider both the pleasure principle and the consideration of higher-level qualities together. Since the student’s act of cheating would only consider the pleasure principle and disregard the sense of higher-level goods, utilitarianism would argue that his cheating is not morally …show more content…

Part of being the complexity of human nature and, therefore, the complexity of the needs of humans in order to attain happiness, is that some pain or sacrifice is involved to attain true happiness. It would not be proper to say that the action of both the student and the teacher were wrong because cheating is wrong, but rather their actions are morally wrong because they are denying their humanity. Living in a world with simple solutions to complex situations drifts both the teacher and the student into an animalistic existence of sorts, and prevents the student from ever being able to achieve true

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