Utilitarianism

As a committed utilitarian, I feel that an action is morally right (and thus my obligation) if and only if that action produces the most good and value for those entities X of all the alternative actions available to me. With this in mind, I am concerned about how a utilitarian should respond to the problem of future generations. Before we proceed to determine our obligations to future generations as a utilitarian, one must answer the following questions. The first question is what sort of things are good and have value? That is does the experience of pleasure have values? Perhaps what has value is objective and is not reducible to a single thing such as pleasure. So such things as friendship, knowledge, artistic skill, play, romantic love, and physical well being all have value. The second question is what sort of entities count and which ones must we consider? Do we consider all people that are alive now or all persons that will exist in the future and what about animals do we includ...