Theories Of Utilitarianism

In this paper I will talk about a moral theory that goes by the name utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is the view that actions are morally acceptable if and only if they produce at least as much happiness as any other available action. The more happiness and less suffering that results from our actions, the better the action is and the right action is the one that produces the greatest balance of happiness over suffering. Utilitarianism can be broken up into two parts, a theory of what is valuable and a theory of right action. Utilitarianism is a way of looking at morality that instead of saying this actions right or wrong action, it looks at the result. Utilitarian never okay to murder it looks at the action and let’s look at the consequences
May it not just happiness, but wellbeing more broadly understood that valuable. For example, a person has an accident in transmitter room of a television station. Electrical equipment has fallen on his arm, and he cannot be rescued with turning off the transmitter for fifteen minutes. A super bowl game is in progress, and it is watched by a lot of people and it will not be over for at least one more hour. that person injury would not get any worse if we wait, but the person hand has been mashed and receiving extremely painful electrical shocks. Should we rescue the person now or wait until the game is over? Does the right thing to depends on how many people are watching, whether it’s one million or five million? “Bentham would defiantly say we leave that person to suffer and let the one million or five million people to happy”. (sandal 34) On this example I do not agree with because we should save that person’s life. Who know within that one hour if the person would have gotten a lot of shock to make him brain dead. Then he will be suffering and in pain and the one million people would be living their own
For example, the four sailor who made a difficult decision on the twentieth day. The decision involved a cabin boy who had been drinking seawater which is in fact poisonous and become ill and finally would have die. The other three sailors made the decision to stab kill and eat the cabin boy, so that the rest of them would live and on day twenty-four they were rescued then they were tried for murder. Their defense “was well the cabin boy was going to die anyway if we did not kill him and eat, we would have all died and therefore we should be excused.” (sandel 33) On this example I do not agree that this was the right thing to do because it did not bring happiness it brought more suffering in the end. The two man went to prison and the other man I bet he was regretting why he could not have stopped them from killing the cabin boy. That boy maybe would not have die in the end if they just gave him one more day. He might have been the one who would have saved them all. They killed the cabin boy without his consent he was still a minor who maybe would have become a doctor or something more if they let him live. This example did