Engineering Ethics

profilefh00od
utilitarianism.ppt
Home>English homework help>Engineering Ethics

Utilitarianism

  • A Consequentialist Ethic
  • Consequences of an action determine whether or not the action is right or wrong

Jeremy Bentham
1748-1832

Utilitarianism

  • Linked to a notion of what it means to be human
  • The Observation of Human Nature
  • Humans tend to seek pleasure and avoid pain

Utility means?

  • Usefulness

An Action is Good

  • If it tends to maximize pleasure & minimize pain
  • For the greatest number of people

Hedonic Calculus

  • 7 considerations
  • First 4 deal with the sensation
  • Intensity
  • Duration
  • Certainty/uncertainty
  • Propinquity

Two address the means-end relationship

  • Fecundity
  • Purity

Last Is In Class By Itself

  • Extent

Right or wrong?????

  • More Pain than Pleasure
  • WRONG
  • More Pleasure than Pain
  • RIGHT

Hedonic Calculus

  • Intensity
  • Duration
  • Certainty/ uncertainty
  • Propinquity
  • Fecundity
  • Purity
  • Extent

Two types of Utilitarianism

  • Act – determines right or wrong on a case by case basis.
  • Rule – uses Utilitarian means to determine whether or not rules, laws, etc. are right or wrong.

Bentham

  • All pleasures are equal in quality
  • `Pushpins are as good as poetry’
  • `Rights are nonsense on stilts’

John Stuart Mill 1806 -1873

John Stuart Mill

  • Disagrees with Bentham on two points.
  • Higher vs. Lower Pleasures `It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.’

Mill

  • Mill argues for Rights
  • Rights are in the greatest good for the greatest number ….. Security