: David Mills Daniel
: Briefly: AS/A2 Revision Guide - Ethics and Religious Ethics
: David Mills Daniel
: 9780993025426
: 1
: CHF 2.50
:
: Allgemeines, Lexika
: English
: 314
: DRM
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
By the author of SCM AS/A2 Ethics and Moral Philosophy, the Briefly series and Briefly: 25 Great Philosophers from Plato to Sartre, Briefly: AS/A2 Revision Guide - Ethics and Religious Ethics is designed to help students prepare for: - the Ethics/Religious Ethics modules in the AS/A2 level Religious Stud­ies Specifications offered by all the examination boards in England and Wales - those aspects of AS/A2 Philosophy concerned with moral philosophy. In 14 chapters, the book covers: metaethics; consequentialist and utilitarian ethics; deontological and Kantian ethics; virtue ethics; natural law ethics, conscience and justice; situation ethics; religious and Christian ethics; determinism and free will; abortion and euthanasia; infertility, assisted conception and embryo research; human and sexual relationships; issues of equality and human rights; war and peace; animal welfare and the environment. Through the use of bullet points and bold type, the book is structured so as to aid revision of the key points students need to know and understand in order to answer AS and A2 questions. Each chapter includes: - one or more AS/A2-type questions, which students can use to test their knowledge and understanding of the content of each chapter - a Bibliography - a list of Useful Internet Resources.

2 Consequentialist and Utilitarian Ethics

 

This chapter contains:

·        The main features of consequentialist and utilitarian ethics

·        Jeremy Bentham’s version of utilitarianism

·        John Stuart Mill’s version of utilitarianism

·        The preference utilitarianism of Peter Singer

·        An AS/A2-type question

·        Bibliography

·        Internet resources

 

The main features of consequentialist and utilitarian ethics

Consequentialist ethics is concerned with theconsequences of actions.

 

Actions are evaluated by thecriterion of whether (and to what extent) they promotean end, which is held to be a/themain or ultimate good for human beings. Actions areright to the extent that they promote this good, andwrong to the extent that they prevent it.

 

Consequentialist ethicists usually base their views about what is the main good for human beings on observation of thenature of human beings and thethings they actually want.  

 

There seem to be many such things, but consequentialists generally maintain that they boil down to one ultimate object that human beings always pursue:

pleasure

orhappiness.

This can also be expressed as avoiding the opposite of pleasure or happiness:pain.

 

This isutilitarianism, which evaluates actions by thecriterion of the amount of pleasure or happiness th