PHIL 110 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Virtue Ethics, Egotism, Descriptive Ethics
Document Summary
Descriptive ethics: describes what people think is right/wrong. Utilitarianism: right/wrong depends on consequences of an action for the happiness of other people. Egoism: right/wrong depends on consequences for the agent (aka person doing the action). Utilitarianism and egoism are two different types of consequentialism. Consequentialism: consequences of an action determines moral status. Greatest happiness principle: actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. According to mill, happiness is derived from pleasure and absence of pain. There are degrees of pain; therefore, there are degrees of happiness and degrees of right/wrong. For mill, the quantity and quality of pleasure is involved. Some pleasures have more quality than others that are more quantitive and that makes them more important. Mill claims that those who only think of pleasure and pain are considered to be swine.
