Question

according to Jeremy Bentham and his thought of the goal of social policy was to maxmizie hedons. what is utilitarianism and how does it differ from cost benefit analysis? and also what is hedonistic utilitarianism and how does it support Peter singer's argument that spotted owls should receive priority over loggers and their families?

I need help with answering these questions please as an essay answering!

Answer 1

There are many theories available to explain the importance of hedonism. These theories mainly focus on desire and discomfort that we have over a situation or people whom we deal with. People being desirous find happiness in their past memories for example the individual's memories in school days like participation in cultural or sporting events might give lot of happiness when we recollect those. These memories are recollected by means of photographs or through casual chat that we have with our friends. So such conversations help bring in happiness within one selves. At the same time when we hear the news of friend a schoolmate meeting with an accident, then this news shall give us lot of pain within us. Therefore, hedonism theories distinguishes between various moral values, feels and their satisfaction levels towards each type of incidents.

The utilitarianism theory counts on the individual and group of people who are likely to be affected to due to some action. These theories confine over the happiness that a group of people will get by an action. Though this theory do not address the fundamental values of individual such as relationship, we have with a person, fairness of our action or truthfulness. Cost benefit analysis is closely connected with theory of utilitarianism but does not addresses the moral values. Project Manager works with his or her team to optimize the cost level and achieve profit to the organization. This ethical way of approach, that Project Manager works for the benefit of organization. Nevertheless, if he gets bribe and appoints suppliers making low quality products then it can damage the credibility of organization. Let’s take another example a corrupt political leader keeps utilizing the reform funds for his own individual benefit such as appointing contractors who utilizes low quality equipment’s for cleaning of streets then it will affect the cleanliness of whole streets resulting in epidemic and illness all around. This action of political leader will affect whole community and finally people will not be satisfied with this action. In addition, there is flipside of the same incident, if political leader brings in reforms to the people then the whole province will be happy and there are greater chances that people will elect him during next elections. Therefore, cost benefit analysis does not focus on the moral values and is more towards the benefit that one would get out of an action. Whereas utilitarianism is focuses on the moral values that one would have in real time. Theory of utilitarianism concentrates on the wellbeing, happiness or benefit that people can get based on the action. Cost benefit can be calculated easily within in short time whereas it takes lot of time to calculate the benefits of utilitarianism.

Theory of Hedonistic utilitarianism is the correctness of action of an individual performs and the pleasure he or she gets out of it. This theory only talks about the happiness of an individual and all the affected people out of the action being performed. It supports Peter Singer's arguments since the people destroy animals or forests for one's own benefit and do nt think about the animals or deforestation. Every individual has right to live and should not be harmed. People who destroy the creatures do not understand the pain that it would have, but it merely they concentrate on the happiness or satisfaction which they get over this harmful action.