Review:
For John Rachels, utilitarianism is correct telling us to consider the consequences of actions and ion advising us to be impartial, but incorrect in ignoring other important moral considerations such as merit. He was able to summarized classical utilitarianism in 3 propositions. “First, actions are to be judged right or wrong solely in virtue of their consequences. Second, in assessing consequences, the only thing that matters is the amount of happiness or unhappiness that is caused. Lastly, in calculating the happiness or unhappiness that will be caused, no one’s happiness is to be counted as more important than anyone else’s”
At some point in the article, it discussed the 3 antiutilitarian arguments. First is justice. It was stated that justice requires that people should treat other people fairly, according to their individual needs and merits. The second argument is rights. I think the rights that this argument is talking about are the rights that we have as a human being like right to freedom of religion, right to free speech and many others. The last argument is backward-looking reasons.
John Rachels also stated the 2 kinds of utilitarianism. First is rule-utilitarianism. Rule-utilitarianism means that an action is moral is it follows the rules that would lead to the greatest good. A rule- utilitarian person would ask first, “What general rules of conduct tend to promote the greatest happiness?” The second kind of utilitarianism is act-utilitarianism. Act-utilitarianism means that an action is good based on the amount of good consequences an action has. To make it short, rule-utilitarianism is based on rules it followed while act-utilitarianism is based on the end-result of the action.
