Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Philosophy Act Utilitarianism Act Utilitarianism Utilitarianism is a consequentialist ethical theory. An action is right or wrong based on its consequences. John Stuart Mill was an important philosopher in developing the idea of utilitarianism. Utilitarianism holds that any action that results in a greater amount of happiness in the world is a right action and any action that results in pain or less happiness is wrong. Utilitarianism can be divided into different versions. Act utilitarianism is one of the versions of utilitarianism. Act utilitarianism’s goal is to maximize the overall happiness of the universe. Act utilitarianism uses the Greatest Happiness Principle which says in every situation, choose the option that you believe to be most likely to produce the greatest possible happiness or least possible unhappiness for the all people who will be affected. An act utilitarian would determine if robbing a bank is a right action or not by determining how much happiness the robbery would create. To do this he would have to use the hedonistic calculus, which is a way of adding up all the happiness that everyone affected by an action would receive. If the results of this calculation show that the bank managers, the hundreds of investors, and the police would all be unhappy with this action and only the robber and maybe his family would be happy, then robbing the bank is a wrong action. If the bank managers did not care about the customer’s money, the FDIC insured all the stolen money, the police were not unhappy because of the robbery, and the robber was extremely happy because he could move to the Caribbean and never work again, then robbing the bank would be a right action. There are many good points to act utilitarianism. It is very appealing because most people want to increase their happiness and reduce their pain. Act utilitarianism says that people could do that and they would not only make everyone happier but they would also be doing what is morally right. Act utilitarians will not have conflicts over any action being right or wrong because the hedonistic calculus is an objective test that proves the amount of please or pain that will result. It is a standard that all actions can be evaluated by. Another point or act utilitarianism that can be seen as an advantage over rule utilitarianism is that each individual situation can have a different action be right. This means that in every situation the right action will provide more happiness or less pain as opposed to rule utilitarianism where the individual situations do not matter. Act utilitarianism also has some disadvantages. One major fault of act utilitarianism is that some actions would produce a greater amount of happiness if they were done in secret. The same action, however, would produce less happiness if it were done in public. That means that the exact same action and situation would be right if no one knew about it but wrong if enough people were aware of it. If people know about an action and believe it is wrong, then wouldn’t it be just as wrong if no one knew about it? The action would still have the same affect on the same amount of people, they just would not know about, so they could not be unhappy about it. Act utilitarianism can also seem unjust because the hedonistic calculus may say that it is right to take away the rights of a person because it will contribute to the overall happiness in the universe. Act utilitarianism would say an action producing pain for a small number of innocent people is right as long as the rest of the world is happy about it. Another problem is the feelings of a person are disregarded; only the consequences are important. Some other problems with act utilitarianism are if a person has never experienced a similar situation, then they will be unable to perform the hedonistic calculus because they will not know if people will be happy or not. It also may not be possible to compare the different people’s happiness. Act Utilitarianism has many problems. If everyone acted according to act utilitarianism, then the majority or people would probably be happier. But morally correct actions do not necessarily have to make people happy, so act utilitarianism might not be a good way to determine if an action is really right or wrong. Bibliography: Word Count: 760
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