Essay On Teleological Theories

[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]

Essay on Teleological Theories

Teleological Theories

The focus is on an action's consequences (what is good).
Moral values are more important.
The consequences that an individual's actions produce have a substantial role in a situation's moral evaluation and the individual's intentions have no relevance.
There is a specifiable relation between good and right.
Concepts about moral duties (i.e., what is right) are definable in reference to concepts about moral value (i.e., what is good).
The good is prior to the right.
An action's rightness depends upon the action's goodness (or value).
It is the action's moral status that is important.
The statement 'x is a moral action' means 'x produces at least as good consequences as all other possible actions'.
Experience reveals what is good.
There are no actions that are moral or immoral in themselves.
Moral duties have a positive formulation.
One must give equal and impartial consideration to other's interests and happiness, as well as one's own, in all moral considerations and evaluations.
To do what is moral (i.e., good) requires that one acts so as to maximize the happiness that one's action produce.

Teleological theories hold that the rightness or wrongness of an action is always determined by its tendency to produce certain consequences which are intrinsically good or bad. Hedonism is a form of teleological theory. It is plain that teleological theories can be subdivided into monistic and pluralistic varieties. A monistic theory would hold that there is one and only one characteristic which makes a state of affairs good or bad intrinsically. A pluralistic theory would hold that there are several independent characteristics of this kind. Hedonism is a monistic teleological theory. I think that a similar subdivision could be made among deontological theories....................

ESSAY ON PHILOSOPHY