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Consequentialism
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism emphasizes happiness or pleasure or utility as the desirable goal for
human choice and action. The paragraph refers to the former variety which disregards
rules if they are absolute, calculating happiness in term of the consequences and acts.
Such a view has radical implications because it opens up for review any conventional or
revealed morality which is insisted upon regardless of its consequences. Utilitarianism
challenges subjectivist views based on subjective approval and disapproval; similarly it
changes cultural and ethical relativism when that implies that acts generally approve by
a particular society are right and those disapproved are wrong.
When presses as to why we should not break promises it might eventually be concede
that the consequences of not following that rule are unacceptable for marriage or for
democracy or for the other fiduciary relationships of society. Take the case of a medical
doctor who is the only medico in a isolated area. This practitioner has a deontological
based conscience (nature of duty and obligation) objection to abortion. She is faced with
a woman patient with a 15-week pregnancy who insists that, because of her isolation, if
the doctor will not perform an abortion on her she will resort to assistance and methods
to effect the abortion that the doctor know could have severe medical complications. If
the doctor precedes with the abortion and follows the medical injunction to act for the
patients welfare she might cite as a reason the consequential health of the mother.
Christian ethics