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Strong rule utilitarianism (SRU) gives a utilitarian account for the claim that moral rules should be obeyed at all places and times.SRU does not deteriorate into act utilitarianism like weak rule utilitarianism, but it shares weaknesses with similarly absolutist moral stances (notably, deontological ones).
In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for the affected individuals. [1] [2] In other words, utilitarian ideas encourage actions that lead to the greatest good for the greatest number.
A social choice rule is a mechanism which uses the data () to select some element(s) from which are "best" for society (the question of what "best" means is the basic problem of social choice theory). The utilitarian rule selects an element which maximizes the utilitarian sum
Negative utilitarianism is a form of negative consequentialism that can be described as the view that people should minimize the total amount of aggregate suffering, or that they should minimize suffering and then, secondarily, maximize the total amount of happiness.
Two-level utilitarianism is virtually a synthesis of the opposing doctrines of act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism. Act utilitarianism states that in all cases the morally right action is the one which produces the most well-being, whereas rule utilitarianism states that the morally right action is the one that is in accordance with a ...
Callicles in Gorgias argues similarly that the strong should rule the weak, as a right owed to their superiority. [9] The Book of Wisdom, written around the first century BC to first century AD, describes the reasoning of the wicked: "Let us oppress the righteous poor man; let us not spare the widow nor regard the gray hairs of the aged. But ...
Act utilitarianism is a utilitarian theory of ethics that states that a person's act is morally right if and only if it produces the best possible results in that specific situation. Classical utilitarians, including Jeremy Bentham , John Stuart Mill , and Henry Sidgwick , define happiness as pleasure and the absence of pain.
In social choice, a tyranny-of-the-majority scenario can be formally defined as a situation where the candidate or decision preferred by a majority is greatly inferior (hence "tyranny") to the socially optimal candidate or decision according to some measure of excellence such as total utilitarianism or the egalitarian rule.