ABSTRACT
The shift in moral philosophy—from asserting what actions and ways of being have intrinsic moral worth to predicting consequences—began with a utilitarian argument for maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. The growing importance of the social sciences led to other ways of estimating outcomes, and economics now relies on cost-benefit analysis. David Hume first proposed a theory of utilitarianism, but Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill became its main proponents. In Utilitarianism, Mill urged that we act so as to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Alternative forms of utilitarian reasoning, which may be distinguished from its original formulation, now known as act utilitarianism, have been devised to try to deal with these difficulties in predicting outcomes. Rule utilitarianism relies on past events for consequential evidence of what an ethical rule should be. If the outcomes of enforcing a rule have been more beneficial than not, then the rule is justified.
