Utilitarianism: Principles and Assumptions Report

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Introduction

Utilitarianism is a principle that promotes actions fostering pleasure or happiness in activities that can cause harm or unhappiness. Utilitarianism was directed towards promoting political decisions and economic and societal betterment. Utilitarianism is generally based on three notable principles. Notably, pleasure and happiness are the only things that encourage good value; the best deals in leadership serve as instrumental value. These instrumental values promote oneself to becoming a better person, for instance, being a teacher; these are not values just because the person has a profession in teaching, but because they value it. This brings pleasure and happiness since it promotes beauty and knowledge. People appreciate beauty since it brings pleasure. This makes most utilitarians more passionate about what they do to become happy.

Principles of utilitarianism

Consequently, actions are right insofar since they foster happiness. This principle argues that the more pleasure the affected activities produce, the better efforts one portrays. However, the guide is provocative since its consequentialism decides the military actions. This is because most people have different motives behind their actions (Thomas, 2018). For instance, working for charity only motivates compassion and a sense of being in a duty. In addition, everyone’s happiness usually counts equally. Joy is generally contained in a simple and valuable manner. However, this differs from one person to another depending on how they take and do things. This makes the principle more progressive since it is decided based on quality. The government usually passes policies that benefit everyone equally; for this reason, utilitarianism is greatly moved due to the just rulings.

The historical context of utilitarianism

Utilitarianism was traced back to be originated from epicureanism of the Greek philosophers. The philosopher argues that the accomplishment of the goal of solving the cases of stress must be based on an individual’s pleasure and actions that promote happiness (Abumere, 2019). For instance, Bentham argues that the chain of pleasure and pain is usually based on the instinct value worldwide.

Assumptions of utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is usually based on three underlying assumptions; for instance, the individual’s main goal is a pleasure. Consequently, the specific utility in oneself satisfaction is achieved by attaining the greatest level of happiness (Feng et al., 2022). This is based on the benefits and advantages that one acquires. The actions that an individual does are usually assumed to induce pleasure. Time is generally used as a determinant of individuals’ satisfaction since it measures the level of individuals’ happiness in the future. Based on this assumption, the discounting time value is usually categorized as the individual’s standardized preference. Commitment to truth is typically used as a mechanism that pushes people to feel comfortable believing in a value that gives more understanding of extreme utilitarianism.

Conclusion

The understanding of utilitarianism usually impacts a knowledge of the human being’s sense of feeling towards being happy. This is generally based on the actions they typically take as their passion. The principles of utilitarianism have been placed as the basis that promotes the feeling of belonging in society and even shapes the type of leadership that one may portray; individuals’ actions may make people see value in themselves, thus making the people feel comfortable when they interact with others. The level of happiness is sometimes based on the benefits and advantages that one may have and be ready to share.

References

Abumere, F. A. (2019). Utilitarianism. Introduction to Philosophy: Ethics.

Feng, T., Ke, S., & McMillan, A. (2022). Utilitarianism and social discounting with countably many generations. Journal of Mathematical Economics, 98, 102576.

Thomas, D. (2018). Gritty, sensible, and practical–the only model?: Special educational needs initial teacher training and professional development. In rethinking special needs in mainstream schools (pp. 110-120). Routledge.

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