Utilitarianism

Introduction:
•There are two major types of ethical systems.
1.Deontological ethical system (one in which the locus of value is the act or the kind of act.
2.Teleological ethical systems ( one in which the locus of value is the outcome or consequences of the act)
•Teleological systems consider the ultimate criterion of morality to lie in some nonmoral value that results from acts.
•Thus, a teleologist would judge whether lying was morally right or wrong by the consequences it produced.
•Deontological systems consider certain features the act itself to have intrinsic value.
•Thus, a deontologist would see something intrinsically wrong in the very act of lying.

Illustration
•Suppose that you’re on an island with a dying millionaire.
•As he lies dying, he asks you for one final favour.
•He asks you to give all his $2 million to a football club.
•You agree to carry out his last wish.
•Now on traveling back, you see a newspaper advertisement placed by the World Hunger Relief Organization pleading for $2 million to be used to save 100,000 people dying of starvation in Africa.
•You begin to reconsider your promise to the dying man. What should you do with the money?
•Suppose there is a raft floating on the Pacific Ocean. On the raft are 2 men who are starving to death. They discover some food in an inner compartment of a box on the raft. The food is sufficient to keep one of them alive, until the raft reaches a certain island where help is available. If they share the food, both of them will most likely die. One of these men is a brilliant scientist who has in his mind the cure for cancer. The other man is undistinguished.
•“What is the morally right thing to do? Share the food and hope for a miracle” Flip a coin in order to see which man gets the food? Give the food to the scientist?

The teleologists on illustrations
•If you flip a coin or share the food, you sided with the deontologists. If you give the food to the scientist, you sided with the teleologists
•The teleologists ( the utilitarians) would calculate that there would be greater good accomplished as a result of the scientist getting the food and living than in any of the other likely outcomes.

What is teleologist? In comparison to Deontologist and Egoism
1.A person whose ethical decision-making aims solely at maximizing nonmoral goods, such as pleasure, happiness, welfare and the amelioration of suffering.
2.For the teleologist, the standard of right or wrong action is the comparative consequences of the available actions.
3.The act is right which produces the best consequences.
4. On the other hand, deontologist is concerned only with the rightness of the act itself, while the teleologist asserts that there is no such things as an act having intrinsic worth.
5. For the deontologist, there is something intrinsically bad about lying, whereas for the teleologist , the only thing wrong with lying is the bad consequences it produces.
In comparison to Deontologist and Egoism
•If you can calculate that a lie will bring more good than telling the truth, then you have an obligation to lie.
•In Egoism (the view that act which produces the most amount of good for the agent is the right act) is one type of teleological ethics. (narrowed to the agent him/herself.
•In Utilitarianism, it is a universal teleological system. It calls for the maximization of goodness in society for “the greatest goodness for the greater number.”