CASE STUDY

Case Study

Case Study

Introduction Ethics, by definition, is a philosophical discipline, applicable to individuals or groups that balance what is good and bad with principles of conduct governing moral duty and obligation. Ethics is one part of philosophy that will always be studied, and like most subjects in philosophy, will never be viewed the same by everyone. There are so many cultures that have so many different beliefs about the way a person's life should be lived out. Things like religion, poverty, and mental health all contribute to our beliefs in ethics. Some people believe that the mental state of a person or the motive for that person committing a crime should be factors when sentencing time comes (McCrone, 2002). Others think that no matter the situation, a crime is a crime, and no compassion should be felt for the guilty. In the studies of philosophy these beliefs are put into two categories: utilitarian, witch would give leeway to the guilty depending on the circumstances, and Kantian, were a crime is a crime, no matter the motives involved.

Discussion

Utilitarianism is a way of looking at ethics; it focuses on trying to ensure the maximum happiness in many different ways. There are many different forms of utilitarianism; the four I will discuss are act, rule, naive and preference utilitarianism which is related to e-therapy case.

Rule utilitarianism tries to give the greatest overall benefit to society, the best rule/law of conduct is found and everyone is found a rule utilitarian will follow it; hence e-therapy according to rule utilitarianism is a way that gives the greatest overall benefit to society as lot of people can access to these therapies (Lavin, 2003).

However, this can cause problems if you use this rule in a place where it is not generally followed as problems will be caused if you differ from the general population. Another difficulty is that all the best rules would be very complicated and this would make them hard to follow and many people would not bother to follow them at all.

Naive utilitarianism can be applied for e-therapy because Naive utilitarianism seeks to end up with the greatest amount of pleasure or the least amount of pain. A major problem with this is that it is almost impossible to measure pleasure and pain. Another problem is that increasing the happiness of an already happy person might be chosen over ending somebody's suffering ...