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Question: What is motive utilitarianism!?
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Utilitarianism is a doctrine that affects to know the rightness or wrongness of an action on the basis of whether the action maximizes happiness or does not!. Therefore if an action increases happiness, then it is right, if it fails to maximize happiness, whether it causes actual displeasure or not, then it is wrong!. Indirect utilitarianism looks at actions as secondary to other phenomena such as institutions, including the norms that make up these institutions, or other social facts!. Motive utilitarianism, a very special version of the indirect type, takes into account the motives behind actions in order to determine in part the rightness or wrongness of the actions!. Therefore it is no longer enough to know whether the actions taken by an actor in a situation maximize happiness or not in the world, since even actions that do so may be misinterpreted!. Motive utilitarianism recently has been associated in politics with the Bush administration's reliance on pre-emption, an attempt to forestall what is seen as an inevitable wrong by acting rightly according to a definition that takes into account the motives of the other actor--so, even if Saddam Hussein had stopped making WMD's, his intention to do so again would be enough to interpret his actions as wrong and to act to forestall them!. Others question the ability of one actor to judge the motive-construction of the other actors in any given situation--the well known political philosopher Zizek for instance would point to a reliance on ideology to make such judgements as something that would "muddy up" the field!. BOKO!. Www@QuestionHome@Com