Success is not the

key to happiness.
Happiness is the
key to success.
If you love what
you are doing, you
will be successful.
♦ Albert Schweitzer
 Group 1
♦ Roxann Sommerville
♦ Monesha Johnson
♦ Ava-Loi Walsh
Utilitarianism
♦ an action is morally right if the
consequences of that action are more
favorable than unfavorable to everyone.

♦ Simply put, utility means satisfaction

♦ First, according to act-utilitarianism, it
would be morally wrong to waste time on
leisure activities such as watching
television, since our time could be spent in
ways that produced a greater social benefit,
such as charity work.
There are two ways to divide utilitarian
theories
♦ (1) into different views on what counts as
utility (preference satisfaction, happiness,
pleasure)
♦ (2) into different objects of evaluation (act,
rule).
 Act/Rule
utilitarianism
♦ Bentham proposed that we tally the
consequences of each action we perform
and thereby determine on a case by case
basis whether an action is morally right or
wrong.
♦ This aspect of Bentham's theory is known
as act-utilitarianism.
♦ Second, Bentham also proposed that we
tally the pleasure and pain which results
from our actions.
♦ For Bentham, pleasure and pain are the only
consequences that matter in determining
whether our conduct is moral.
♦ This aspect of Bentham's theory is known
as hedonistic utilitarianism.
♦ Rule utilitarianism says that you evaluate an
action according to its conformity to the best rules,
and you evaluate rules according to whether they
produce the most utility.
♦ Unlike act utilitarianism, which weighs the
consequences of each particular action, rule-
utilitarianism offers a litmus test only for the
morality of moral rules, such as "stealing is
wrong."
♦ Adopting a rule against theft clearly has more
favorable consequences than unfavorable
consequences for everyone.
♦ The same is true for moral rules against
lying or murdering.
♦ Rule-utilitarianism, then, offers a three-
tiered method for judging conduct.
♦ A particular action, such as stealing my
neighbor's car, is judged wrong since it
violates a moral rule against theft.
♦ In turn, the rule against theft is morally
binding because adopting this rule produces
favorable consequences for everyone.
♦ John Stuart Mill's version of utilitarianism
is rule-oriented.
Desire
utilitarianism
How is it that something can be
‘good’?
♦ according to desire utilitarianism,
pleasurable consequences are the only
factors that matter, morally speaking.
♦ This, though, seems too restrictive since it
ignores other morally significant
consequences that are not necessarily
pleasing or painful.
♦ Desire utilitarianism is like rule
utilitarianism in that it says that you
evaluate actions according to whether they
conform to the best desires, and you
measure desires according to their utility.
♦ Utility, in turn, is measured in terms of
desire fulfillment .
♦ Desire utilitarianism holds that value-laden
terms such as ‘good’ relate to reasons for
action.
♦ To call a particular state of affairs ‘good’ is
to say that reasons for action exist to pursue
that thing.
♦ A state is bad if reasons for action exist for
avoiding it.
♦ The only reasons for action that exist are
desires.
♦ Desires are propositional attitudes.
♦ We can evaluate desires themselves by
measuring their tendency to fulfill other
desires, So, now we have a way of
evaluating character traits (desires).
desire
utilitarianism as
a virtue theory
♦ As a virtue theory, desire utilitarianism has
some significant advantages over other
virtue theories in that it does not require any
strange metaphysics to account for value.
♦ Virtues are desires – ordinary material-
world states that we have been using to
explain and predict real world events
(intentional behavior) for years.
♦ There is no God or intrinsic value, yet these
entities (desires) are as real as quarks and
black holes (other things we cannot see
directly, but which we know about because
of their effects).
Virtue Ethics
♦ Virtue theory is a branch of
moral philosophy that emphasizes
character, rather than rules or consequences,
as the key element of ethical thinking.
today the tradition’s key concepts derive
from ancient Greek philosophy.
 These concepts include:
♦ arête (excellence or virtue),
♦ phronesis (practical or moral wisdom),
♦ eudaimonia (flourishing).
♦ Obviously, strong claims about the purpose
of human life, or of what the good life for
human beings is, will be highly
controversial.
♦ Virtue theory's necessary commitment to a
teleological account of human life thus puts
the tradition in sharp tension with other
dominant approaches to normative ethics,
which, because they focus on actions, do
not bear this burden.
♦ Virtue ethics are based purely on the
choices that we make.
 It is for me, not for you, to
pronounce on whether I am
happy, or on whether my life, as
a whole, has been a happy one,
for, barring, perhaps, advanced
cases of self-deception and the
suppression of unconscious
misery, if I think I am happy
then I am — it is not something I
can be wrong about. Contrast,
my being healthy or flourishing.