Utilitarian Response To Objections Regarding Justice And Supererogation Philosophy Essay

Utilitarian Response To Objections Regarding Justice And Supererogation Philosophy EssayIn this essay I am brea social function out to firstly explain the image of utileism. I will then discuss the tasks it faces regarding both justice and supererogation in the lead evaluating whether the arguments for these objections atomic number 18 convincing and whether a utilitarian stinkpot give a response.Utilitarianism is a honourable philosophy that relies on the principle of usefulness to forge the heartfelt unspoiltness or impairmentness of an scrap point. It is therefore a consequentialist possibleness, since it relies fundamentally on the principle that the deterrent workout worth of an behave token is judged solely on that acts ability to maximize benefit. This utility can be defined in a variety of ways, for show face knowledge or preference satisfaction, however for the purpose of this essay I am going to define utility as John Stuart Mill didActions are in for ce(p) in proportion as they tend to lift happiness wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is mean pleasure and the absence of pain by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure.1A general definition of utilitarianism top executive therefore go as followsAn act token A is chastely right if and only if it produces as untold or more happiness for all those involved than any in stock(predicate) alternative.Bentham proposed a system of calculating the total value of an actions consequences, which is kn experience as the felicific calculus2. This takes into account the intensity, duration, likelihood etc. of the pleasures and pains which result from our actions and utilitarians paint a picture that by using this system we are able to compare the ethics of actions. They believe that we ought always to choose the act that produces the most overall utility. universey of the primary(prenominal) objections made in response to utilitarianism are bas ed on the concepts of justice and fairness. Some people hold that utilitarianism is incompatible with justice and that it can imply that in certain situations it is virtuously right for us to plough people unfairly and violate what we intuitively believe to be their moral and civil rights. These objections arise out of the fact that utilitarians determine the rightness and incorrectness of all actions by using what is known as the Greatest rapture Principle (GHP). If an action satisfies this principle, then it produces the greatest happiness or utility for the greatest amount of people.This raises problems in regards to justice and in particular, the rights of the individual and egalitarian equality. The first justice-related objection I am going to submit is problem of the violation of rights, since, in a utilitarian cabaret, rights are only justify if they are essential to the maximisation of happiness. Therefore if a right is non essential to the overall happiness of a gi ven society, then a utilitarian society is not required to protect it.An example of this would be to imagine a nonage group within a society who engaged in a religious practise of a inner nature which offended the rest of the society. If this was a utilitarian society, the GHP would determine that preventing the minority group from performing these practises would be the chastely right thing to do, because it would maximize the overall utility of the society. This attends intuitively involved since it appears to violate the minoritys civil right to the freedom of religion.The second justice-related objection I am going consider relates to the nature of the GHP principle itself, and the notion that it is a purely collective principle, only concerned with maximising the overall amount of utility.An example of why this is problematic becomes apparent if we consider the act of genocide. It might be the case that in a given society, the extermination of a certain minority (E.G speed of light people) would generate an increase in happiness for the majority (E.G 1,000,000 people.) Utilitarianisms GHP would determine that in this case, genocide was the chastely right act to perform, since the consequence of the action would promote happiness in the larger portion of the population. in time our intuitions tell us that genocide is never something we ought to do, yet in this case utilitarianism reckons to tell us not only that we ought to do it, but that it is morally right.A third base justice-related objection I am going to consider relates to the notion of punishment. An example of this would be to imagine that there had been a series of murders in a township that were generally believed to have been committed by a dispossessed man. Following these murders there has been an outbreak of riot in the town and the murders of several(prenominal) other homeless people have occurred. The sheriff has a homeless man in his custody that has no friends or family and knows that by executing this man, the rioting and murders will stop. The sheriff however knows that this particular homeless man is gratis(p). In this case utilitarianism would determine that it is morally right to convict and consequently execute the impoverished man, because it promotes the most happiness within the given community, and prevents the rioters from causing anymore pain. provided this again goes against our intuitions that it is wrong to punish the innocent.These objections do at first seem very convincing because they appeal to our moral intuitions. However a utilitarian might respond to these cases by suggesting a variation on the serious music strain of utilitarianism rule-utilitarianism. Rule-utilitarianism determines the rightness and wrongness of an act by finding the vanquish rules of conduct that if followed by the majority of a society, would maximise the overall utility of that society. Rule-utilitarians may therefore suggest that in the long run, the rules protecting the civil right to the freedom of religion, not committing genocide and not punishing the innocent would create more overall utility, when followed by all or the majority of a society than not following them on these particular occasions. Rule-utilitarianism might therefore suggest that to follow these rules would be the morally right thing to do.I will now move on to look at some objections to utilitarianism regarding senseless actions. The problem is that utilitarianism does not appear to allow for supererogatory acts. An act is said to be supererogatory if and only if it satisfies the following conditions1) It is morally optional2) It is morally praiseworthy3) It goes beyond the call of dutySince utilitarianism requires that in any situation we may find ourselves in, we are morally get to perform the act that brings about the best possible consequences, it appears to leave no elbow room for supererogation.An example of this would be to imagine a man face up w ith a decision of whether to run into a burning building and provided the five people trapped inside it himself, or to stay at a safe distance and call the emergency services. We are prepared to say that both actions are morally right since both hire to preserve the utility of the people trapped inside the building, however utilitarianism would seem to suggest that the only action that is morally right and thus morally obligatory in this situation, is for the man to run into the burning building himself, since that would maximise the utility of all the people involved. It would seem then that utilitarianism leaves no room for doing more than duty requires.Some have claimed however that utilitarianism can fit out the three conditions of supererogation there will a lot be acts which are morally optional in case where there is more than one act which would maximise utility, and some of these acts will besides be morally praiseworthy. The universal example used to illustrate this is that of Smith, who is given the option to save his own life or Jones life, on the basis that utility will be maximised either way. If Smith saves Jones life instead of his own, he is doing something that is both morally optional and morally praiseworthy. Smiths action of saving Jones is also often considered to go beyond the call of duty, since he is doing more for others than he is required to. However this notion of requirement seems unclear and it seems that supererogation should involve doing more of what there is moral reason to do. In this case however, utilitarianism would deny that there was more moral reason for Smith to save Jones rather than himself, since both acts would maximise utility.Utilitarianism also seems to have the consequence of suggesting that many supererogatory acts are wrong. The common example used to illustrate this is the intuitively supererogatory act of Smith winning Jones out for lunch. If victorious to Jones to the most expensive restaurant in town would maximise the overall utility of everyone involved, then utilitarianism inevitably leads to the suggestion that taking Jones to a moderately priced restaurant would be morally wrong.Objections much(prenominal) as these have led some utilitarians to a variation of the classical theory satisficing consequentialism. This theory determines an action as morally right if it promotes a good enough outcome, however there are some obvious problems with this theory. The main challenge facing satisficing consequentialists is to explain when an outcome is good enough it is not clear whether there is an absolute level of goodness which we ought to abide by or whether levels of goodness are relative to each individual situation.In conclusion it seems that although utilitarianism appears at first to be correct in steering on the consequences of our actions, the principles which form the basis of the theory are not without their problems.The objections jell forward about the issues su ch justice and supererogation that I have considered are all very convincing and although different variations of utilitarianism have attempted to, and often been successful in responding to those objections, there appears to be no unifying version of the theory which can respond to them all. Satisficing consequentialism for example, may be successful in responding to objections regarding supererogation, but may not necessarily be adequate in responding to objections regarding justice. This is obviously problematic because it means we are left with what appears to be an unelaborated moral theory.Since it appears that all the objections to utilitarianism that I have considered are rooted in the notion that the morality of an action is determined by its consequences, we might perchance be better advised to look to a non-consequentialist theory of morality, such as deontology, for a theory of morality that does not suffer from the analogous objections.