Utilitarianism is a philosophical view or theory about how we should value a wide range of things that involve choices people face. Among the things that can be evaluated are actions, laws, policies, character traits, and moral codes. Utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism because it is based on the idea that it is the consequences or results of actions, laws, policies, etc. to determine whether they are good or bad, right or wrong. In general, whatever is being evaluated, we should choose the one that will produce the best overall results. In the language of utilitarians, we should choose the option that “maximizes utility,” that is, that action or policy that produces the greatest amount of good. Utilitarianism appears to be a simple theory because it consists of only one evaluative principle: doing what produces the best consequences. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay In reality, however, the theory is complex because we cannot understand that one principle unless we know (at least) three things: a) which things are good and which are bad; b) whose good (i.e. which individuals or groups) we should aim to maximize; c) whether the actions, policies, etc. they are made right or wrong by their actual consequences (the results that our actions actually produce) or by their foreseeable consequences (the results that we predict will occur based on the evidence we have). Jeremy Bentham answered this question by adopting the view called hedonism. According to hedonism the only good thing in itself is pleasure (or happiness). Hedonists do not deny that many different kinds of things can be good, including food, friends, freedom, and many other things, but hedonists see them as "instrumental" goods that have value only because they play a causal role in producing pleasure or happiness. . Pleasure and happiness, however, are "intrinsic" goods, in the sense that they are good in themselves and not because they produce something further of value. Likewise, on the negative side, the lack of food, friends or freedom is instrumentally negative because it produces pain, suffering and unhappiness; but pain, suffering and unhappiness are intrinsically bad, that is, bad in themselves and not because they produce some further evil. Many thinkers have rejected hedonism because pleasure and pain are sensations we experience, arguing that many important goods are not types of feelings. Being healthy, honest, or possessing knowledge, for example, are considered by some people to be intrinsic goods that are not types of feelings. (People who think there are many such goods are called pluralists or “item list” theorists.) Other thinkers see desires or preferences as the basis of value; whatever a person desires is precious to that person. If desires conflict, then strongly preferred things are identified as good. In this article, the term “well-being” will generally be used to identify what utilitarians consider good or valuable in itself. All utilitarians agree that things have value because they tend to produce well-being or decrease ill-being, but this idea is interpreted differently by hedonists, objective list theorists, and preference/desire theorists. This debate will not be discussed further in this article. Both action and rule utilitarians agree that our overall goal in evaluating actions should be to create the best possible outcomes, but they differ on how to do this. Action utilitarians believe that whenever we decide what to do, we should perform the action thatwill create maximum net utility. In their view, the principle of utility – doing whatever produces the best overall results – should be applied on a case-by-case basis. The right action in every situation is the one that produces more utility (i.e. creates more well-being) than the other available actions. Rule utilitarians adopt a partial two-view that emphasizes the importance of moral rules. According to rule utilitarians: a) a specific action is morally justified if it conforms to a justified moral rule; b) a moral rule is justified if its inclusion in our moral code would create more utility than other possible rules (or no rule at all). According to this perspective, we should judge the morality of individual actions by reference to general moral rules, and we should judge particular moral rules by seeing whether their acceptance into our moral code would produce more well-being than other possible rules. The fundamental difference between act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism is that act utilitarians apply the utilitarian principle directly to the evaluation of individual actions while rule utilitarians apply the utilitarian principle directly to the evaluation of rules and therefore evaluate actions individuals by seeing whether they obey or disobey those rules whose acceptance will produce the greatest utility. The contrast between act and rule utilitarianism, although noted earlier by some philosophers, was not sharply delineated until the late 1950s, when Richard Brandt introduced this terminology. (Other terms that have been used to create this contrast are “direct” and “extreme” for act utilitarianism, and “indirect” and “limited” for rule utilitarianism.) Since the contrast had not been drawn Sharply, earlier utilitarians such as Bentham and Mill sometimes apply the principle of utility to actions and sometimes apply it to the choice of rules for evaluating actions. This led to scholarly debates over whether classical utilitarians supported act utilitarians or government utilitarians or a combination of these views. One indication that Mill accepted rule utilitarianism is his claim that direct appeal to the principle of utility is made only when “secondary principles” (i.e., rules) conflict with each other. In these cases, the principle of “utility maximization” is used to resolve the conflict and determine the right action to take. [Mill, Utilitarianism, chapter 2] Act utilitarianism is often seen as the most natural interpretation of the utilitarian ideal. If our goal is always to produce the best results, it seems plausible to think that, in deciding what is the right thing to do, we should consider the available options (i.e. what actions could be performed), predict the results and approve the action that will produce the greatest good. If every action we take produces more utility than any other action available to us, then the total utility of all our actions will be the highest possible level of utility we could achieve. In other words, we can maximize the overall utility that is in our power to obtain by maximizing the utility of each individual action we perform. If we sometimes choose actions that produce less utility than is possible, the total utility of our actions will be less than the amount of good we could have produced. For this reason, act utilitarians argue, we should apply the utilitarian principle to individual acts and not to classes of similar actions. The most common argument against act utilitarianism is that it provides the wrong answers to moral questions. Critics say it allows various.