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Ethical Theories
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is most often associated with Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). According to utilitarianism principle, a decision is ethical if it provides the greater utility than any other alternative decision. Thus the decision maker must evaluate each decision alternative, and then select the one that yields the greatest net utility (Fritzsche, 1997).
There two types of utilitarianism, act and rule. Individual decisions are evaluated under act utilitarianism when the moral value of a decision is determined by the consequences of the specific act (Fritzsche, 1997). Basically act utilitarianism is a simpler theory and provides an easily understood decision procedure.
On the other hand rule utilitarianism seems to give firmer ground, however, to the rules of morality and to role obligations, which are problems for all teleological theories. A further advantage of rule utilitarianism, according to its proponents, is......

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Approximate Word Count: 1524
Approximate Pages: 7 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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