Consequences of Ethics in Human Actions

The consequences are the effects caused by an action and the quality of these consequences depend on how much good they contain. Motives are the causes and the consequences are the effect. The consequences are defined by various theories, one such is utilitarianism. Utilitarianism evaluates consequences by how much happiness and suffering they contain.

The consequence that mattered to every human is pleasure and happiness in the absence of pain and suffering. The good consequences are defined in terms of happiness and suffering. The amount of pleasure and pain created by an action is really good way of showing that some consequences are better or worse than others. Jeremy Bentham described the consequences based on the actions described below.

Intensity of pleasure or pain

Consequence of an action can be good or bad. How intense it is, makes the difference in the effect. E.g., eating a chocolate and eating bitter guard shows the difference in intensity.

The duration

The duration of pleasure or pain created by an action differs for stubbing one’s toe and breaking one’s toe.

The certainty or uncertainty

Consequences of an action can be certain or uncertain. E.g. jumping off from a higher building can cause a lot of pain to an individual than jumping onto a giant pillow from the same place.

The Nearness or remoteness

During the time of pleasure or pain nearness or remoteness effect follows an action. e.g. Pleasure of eating ice-cream is immediate, whereas the pleasure produced by winning a chess game is little more remote. They take a little longer to show up results.

The fecundity

Consequence of doing the action is either pleasurable or painful, but how likely the action is to be followed by more pleasure or more pain is an important question. The purity or impurity of pleasure or pain is the opposite of fecundity. This explains how likely the action is to be followed by the opposite feeling. For example, eating all the chocolate is very pleasurable at first, but it leads to a great deal of pain in the long run which creates a high level of impurity or a low level of purity.

The extent of an action

This refers to the wide effect of an action. Some actions can have an extent numbering in the millions, such as deciding whether to torture a terrorist for life-saving information.