Hi Simon, these are some of my criticisms of 'Simons Utilitarianism': Firstly, the word punish means to inflict a penalty as retribution for an offence. This means that as long as you do not inflict the penalty for the reason of vengeance, the penalty does not class as punishment and is therefore okay. Similarly how are you defining innocent, we have all committed some kind of sin, be it lying or stealing a toy from a shop when you were 5. Does this mean that that person deserves any and all punishments and no longer morally defended against any wrongdoing. Next by specifying person do you mean that I can do any act to animals, nature, the land etc. burning forests and torturing animals are justified under your Utilitarianism. Here are a few of the reasons your Utilitarianism fails as an ethical theory.

@@michaelcunningham125 Hi Michael, I try to keep my comments concise so that people actually read them. Happy to elaborate further since it does require clarification. The phrase 'punish an innocent person' is indeed an oxymoron, yet I think it's a common phrase that means to inflict a penalty despite the lack of an offence. A common argument against utilitarianism is the scenario of killing a healthy person, someone who is a hermit and cut off from society, in order to remove their organs without consent to give to and save the lives of 5 patients. This would ultimately produce less suffering overall as 5 lives is greater than 1, however I argue that this is a second order evil because the individual has not done anything to deserve this and thus their autonomy should be respected. This seems to solve all ethical arguments against act utilitaranism that I've come across. You've asked about justice. The purpose of the justice system should be to reduce/prevent further wrongdoings. You might put your child on the naughty step to teach them a lesson or put a murder/rapist in prison to restrict them from murdering/raping others. It's not about revenge. I'm defining an innocent person as one who has not committed a relevant offence to the penalty in question. If the penalty is not going to prevent someone from performing a particular action in the future then it is not useful. So it's not about labelling an individual as innocent or guilty based on everything they've ever done in their entire lives. Then lastly, you've asked about personhood. In philosophy, the word person doesn't necessarily mean human. I would give personhood to animals because any being capable of suffering has moral worth and their suffering should be taken into account just as much as anyone else's suffering. Trees would not have personhood because they are not sentient, but burning forests has consequences on animals and humans, so results in suffering.