Final answer:
Act utilitarianism is a consequentialist approach that evaluates the morality of an action based on its ability to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, requiring an assessment of the action's individual consequences each time it is performed.
Step-by-step explanation:
Consequentialist Perspective in Utilitarianism:
The consequentialist perspective that focuses on assessing the utility of each individual act describes act utilitarianism. This ethical framework, primarily developed by philosophers Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, suggests that an action's moral worth is determined by its capacity to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. Act utilitarianism requires an agent to calculate and consider the consequences of each potential action in isolation to determine which will maximize overall utility.
Bentham and Mill's utilitarianism is centered around the principle of utility, which posits that actions are right if they promote happiness and wrong if they produce the reverse, emphasizing happiness or utility as the ultimate measure of moral conduct. According to act utilitarianism, the rightness of an action is contingent purely on the outcomes it generates, where nothing is inherently right or wrong. This approach necessitates a thorough evaluation of the potential impact of each decision on all those affected.
However, this theory comes with challenges such as the potential justification of actions that may conflict with standard moral norms when such actions are predicted to result in greater overall happiness. Act utilitarianism's focus on the consequences of individual actions contrasts with rule utilitarianism, which considers the implications of adopting certain actions as general rules to be followed consistently.