Name: Charmine B. Albao Subject: G.E.

8 (ETHICS)

Course, Year & Section: BSHM 2-B Instructor: Prof. Joy A. Tuburan

Module 2, Lesson 1
Utilitarianism
IV. Learning Assessment

Answer the following questions: Write your answers clearly in a yellow pad or bond paper
and submit of the submission date indicated in your module. (5 points each)
1. What is utilitarianism?

Utilitarianism is a theory of morality, which advocates actions that foster

happiness or pleasure and opposes actions that cause unhappiness or harm. When directed
toward making social, economic, or political decisions, a utilitarian philosophy would aim for
the betterment of society as a whole. Utilitarianism would say that an action is right if it
results in the happiness of the greatest number of people in a society or a group.
Utilitarianism promotes "the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of
people."
Utilitarianism holds that an action is right if it tends to promote happiness and
wrong if it tends to produce sadness, or the reverse of happiness—not just the happiness
of the actor but that of everyone affected by it. At work, you display utilitarianism when
you take actions to ensure that the office is a positive environment for your co-workers to
be in, and then make it so for yourself.
2. What are the three generally accepted axioms of utilitarianism state?
The three generally accepted axioms of utilitarianism state that
Pleasure, or happiness, is the only thing that has intrinsic value.
Actions are right if they promote happiness, and wrong if they promote
unhappiness.
Everyone's happiness counts equally.

3. What is the greatest happiness principle?

The greatest happiness principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they
tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By
happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the
privation of pleasure.

4. Enumerate the limitations of utilitarianism.

In the workplace, though, utilitarian ethics are difficult to achieve. These ethics also can
be challenging to maintain in our business culture, where a capitalistic economy often
teaches people to focus on themselves at the expense of others. Similarly, monopolistic
competition teaches one business to flourish at the expense of others.
 A limitation of utilitarianism is that it tends to create a black-and-white construct
of morality. In utilitarian ethics, there are no shades of gray—either something is
wrong or it is right.
 Utilitarianism also cannot predict with certainty whether the consequences of our
actions will be good or bad—the results of our actions happen in the future.
 Utilitarianism also has trouble accounting for values like justice and individual
rights. For example, say a hospital has four people whose lives depend upon
receiving organ transplants: a heart, lungs, a kidney, and a liver. If a healthy person
wanders into the hospital, his organs could be harvested to save four lives at the
expense of his one life. This would arguably produce the greatest good for the
greatest number. But few would consider it an acceptable course of action, let
alone an ethical one.

So, although utilitarianism is surely a reason-based approach to determining right and

wrong, it has obvious limitations.

5. What is the principle of utility?

The principle of utility states that actions or behaviors are right in so far as they
promote happiness or pleasure, wrong as they tend to produce unhappiness or pain. Hence,
utility is a teleological principle. This once again raises some of the same basic issues
associated with hedonism, as discussed in the earlier section on Teleological Theories.
Recall that a hedonist believes that the good life consists solely in the pursuit and
experience of pleasure or happiness. The feelings of pleasure and pain are biological events
involving our central nervous system, which are controlled by our cerebral cortex. We
obviously experience pleasure when we perform certain acts that fulfill biological
functions such as eating, drinking, and having sex. We also experience pleasure when we
perform certain intellectual activities, such as reading a philosophy textbook, playing
guitar, or drawing a picture. We sometimes, but not always, experience pleasure when we
do the right thing. Conversely, we experience pain when these functions are left
unfulfilled.
6. What is classical utilitarian?
Classical utilitarian are altruists to the extent that they believe that the standard
of right or wrong is not the agent's own greatest happiness, but the greatest amount of
happiness for the greatest number of people. Therefore, the "Good" increases the number
of persons experiencing pleasure among members of a specific group. The "Bad" increases
the number of persons experiencing pain. There are several interesting problems here.

7. What is the fundamental problem for utilitarian?

 The fundamental problem for utilitarianism is justifying the altruistic principle of
self-sacrifice in order to benefit others.
8. What is the greatest happiness for the greatest number?
“The greatest happiness for the greatest number” is something of a useless
chimera of an ethical precept—imagine a gazelle with the legs of a tuna.

V. Enrichment Activities/Outputs

A. Define the following terms:

1. Greatest Happiness
Greatest Happiness holds that the more pleasure and the least pain an action
causes, the better it is morally. We should seek to perform those action and adopt those
policies that lead to the greatest happiness.
2. Moral rights
Moral rights are rights is a justified claim, entitlement or assertion of what a
rights-holder is due. For a person to have the moral right to have, to get, or do something,
there must be a moral basis or justifications are different for different categories of
rights.

3. Intent
Intent is a mental attitude with which an individual acts, and therefore it cannot
ordinarily be directly proved but must be inferred from surrounding facts and
circumstances. Intent refers only to the state of mind with which the act is done or
committed.
4. Justice
Justice is a complex ethical principle, with meanings that range from the fair
treatment of individuals to the equitable allocation of healthcare dollars and resources.
Specifically justice involves the application of fairness to individuals in population groups
or communities.
5. Utility
Utility states that actions or behaviors are right in so far as they promote
happiness or pleasure, wrong as they tend to produce unhappiness or pain. Hence, utility is
a teleological principle. Many utilitarian believe that pleasure and pain are objective states
and can be more or less quantified.
6. Higher Pleasures
Higher Pleasures depend on distinctively human capacities, which have a more
complex cognitive element, requiring abilities such as rational thought, self-awareness or
language use.
7. Rights
A rights is something a person has which people think should not be taken way. It is
a rule about what a person is allowed to do or have. A rights is different from a privilege,
which is something that must be earned. Rights may be put into laws, so they have legal
protection. It is an entitlement to something, whether to concepts like justice and due
process, or to ownership of property or some interest in property, real or personal.

8. Pleasure
It is the inclusive usages important in thought about well-being, experience, and
mind, includes the effective positivity of all joy, gladness, liking and enjoyment and all our
feeling good and happy.
9. Base Pleasure
Base pleasures (those, say, of gluttony, sex, and so on). Lower pleasures, in
contrast, require mere sentience. Humans and other animals alike enjoy basking in the sun,
eating something tasty, or having sex. Only humans engage in art, philosophy, and so on.
Mill was certainly not the first to make this distinction.

10. Legal Rights

A claim recognized and delimited by law for the purpose of securing it. It is the
interest in a claim which is recognized by and protected by sanctions of law imposed by a
state, which enables one to possess property or to engage in some transaction or course of
conduct or to compel some other person to engage or to refrain from some course of
conduct under certain circumstances, and for the infringement of which claim the state
provides remedy in its courts of justice.

B. Explain the following concepts?

a. utilitarianism
Utilitarianism relies upon some theory of intrinsic value: something is held to be
good in itself, apart from further consequences, and all other values are believed to derive
their worth from their relation to this intrinsic good as a means to an end. Bentham and
Mill were hedonists; i.e., they analyzed happiness as a balance of pleasure over pain and
believed that these feelings alone are of intrinsic value and disvalue. Utilitarians also
assume that it is possible to compare the intrinsic values produced by two alternative
actions and to estimate which would have better consequences. Bentham believed that a
hedonic calculus is theoretically possible. A moralist, he maintained, could sum up the units
of pleasure and the units of pain for everyone likely to be affected, immediately and in the
future, and could take the balance as a measure of the overall good or evil tendency of an
action. Such precise measurement as Bentham envisioned is perhaps not essential, but it is
nonetheless necessary for the Utilitarian to make some interpersonal comparisons of the
values of the effects of alternative courses of action.

b. classical utilitarianism

The Classical Utilitarianism, Bentham and Mill, were concerned with legal and social
reform. If anything could be identified as the fundamental motivation behind the
development of Classical Utilitarianism it would be the desire to see useless, corrupt laws
and social practices changed. Accomplishing this goal required a normative ethical theory
employed as a critical tool. What is the truth about what makes an action or a policy a
morally good one, or morally right? But developing the theory itself was also influenced by
strong views about what was wrong in their society. The conviction that, for example, some
laws are bad resulted in analysis of why they were bad. And, for Jeremy Bentham, what
made them bad was their lack of utility, their tendency to lead to unhappiness and misery
without any compensating happiness. If a law or an action doesn't do any good, then it isn't
any good.

C. As a utilitarian, how would you go about reasoning about drug laws in the United
States? Should we legalize all drugs? How about abolishing the practice of requiring a
doctor’s prescription for some drugs?

As a utilitarian, the use of illegal drugs has been a long-standing problem in American
society, a problem that has taken on a particular urgency in the last 30 years. In the early
1960s, a presidential commission stated: ''The concern and the distress of the American
people over the national problem of drug abuse is expressed every day in the newspapers,
the magazines, scientific journals, public forums and in the home. It is a serious and many-
faceted problem"

No, legalizing drugs is not the answer even for the left. Here’s why: Drugs kill. They turn
talented, intelligent people into impulsive animals. They destroy marriages. They deprive
children of emotionally healthy parents. There’s a good reason drugs are illegal: They’re
dangerous. Products that kill do not belong on drugstore shelves.

No in abolishing the practice of requiring a doctor’s prescription for some drugs because
the government should take a common-sense approach, look at the economic advantages of
abolishing prescription charges and concentrate on ensuring that those who do require
medication take it as prescribed. Taking your medicine as prescribed or medication
adherence is important for controlling chronic conditions, treating temporary conditions,
and overall long-term health and well-being. A personal connection with your health-care
provider or pharmacist is an important part of medication adherence.