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John Stuart Mill Good Vs Evil

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1. Utilitarianism states that the right action brings about the greatest good over evil (Mill). Similarly, Consequentialism judges the rightness or wrongness of an action based on the action’s consequences. The driving force for Utilitarianism focuses on maximizing rationality. Maximizing rationality states that it is rational to bring about the maximum amount of something when it is good and irrational not to (Mill). Utilitarianism focuses heavily on doing anything possible to bring about a greater amount of good over evil. If doing so even involves murder, as long as the act brings about a greatest amount of good, then the act is not only the rational action to perform, but it is irrational not to do the action. The “horrible acts” objection to utilitarianism points out that not only is someone permitted to doing something, they must, even when the act is a horrible act (Mill). Since utilitarianism states that one must do the action that brings the most good over evil, the action still may be a horrible one that goes against most usual intuitions. The trolley problem states that there are two tracks. On one of the tracks stands ten people and on the other track stands one hundred. There is a train barreling down the …show more content…

When desiring something for its own sake, what is being desired, has intrinsic value. Intrinsic value is when something has value in and of itself, and not for some further end. Intrinsic value means that the desired has value because of value in the object itself, not for reaching something else. When something is desired for the sake of something else, the desired only has instrumental value. Instrumental value states that something has value as a means to some other end. Instrumental value means that the value of something is only useful to acquire to something else. An example of instrumental value would be money. Usually, money is not valued just to keep for itself, but to use to trade for something else, demonstrating instrumental

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