Peter Singer is my hero: Utilitarianism is a reasonable argument.

Utilitarianism IS an ontological concept. It is a 'formula' that is used to make a moral decision. One would use it in order to make the decision, not to make a posterior judgement. This is the big distinction here. In a sense, Utilitarianism is an ends-based concept, but you portray it as if the 'actual' consequences matter. This is a misconception. A utilitarian decision measures the probabity of the outcome along with its severity. So, in the sense that it values consequences it is, but the actual purpose is to take place BEFORE the decision. For example, if I made the decision to go to my local mall and shoot the first person I saw in the face. It could turn out to be Osama bin Ladin, but, despite the good outcome, it would not have been a good decision. There is no 'greatest number' involved. Utilitarianism does not advocate killing one person so that ten people make a dollar. This notion of majority is only true if we are weighing equal things. This whole conception of 50% and two outweighs one is totally illegitimate. Utilitarian actions are those which the possible positive outcomes outweigh the negative. For instance, it WOULD advocate sacrificing one so that several could live, ASSUMING THAT THE LIVES ARE EQUAL. I fail to see how this is an issue, as I would definately choose to save 5 people over 1, if I had to make the choice. I'm not claiming our government should be utilitarian, or that it should be the basis for all of society's decisions. It is a moral 'guide', so to speak, used to make MORAL decisions. So, on to this whole sadists argument. Just because two people get pleasure out of this does not mean that the one girl being tortured is justified. Refer to my above arguments of numbers. Additionally, the claim that these two things (sadist's pleasure & girl suffering) are equal would be incorrect. Milles goes into great detail regarding the 'competent judge'. In short, he shows how humans are automatically attracted to intellectual or 'higher' pleasures rather than barabaric pleasures. He goes on to say that whenever these pleasures would conflict (pleasure of torturing with rational value of the girl), the 'higher' values would come through because of human's more intellectual faculties. In any instance (sadists) that this wouldn't happen, the values assigned to the consequences would be illegitimate and therfore, the action would be UNJUST. In conclusion, all of the 'majority' arguments are obviously not applying to what utilitarianism really is. Second, utilitarianism is not idealistic because it forms the basis for just decision making and makes no claim to produce maximized actual consequences all the time (bin Ladin argument). It needs no checks and balances because it is based on moral values, not policy options. Utilitarianism is not simply a numbers game. It weighs consequences as to their values and probability, not merely how many people are on each side. Any actual consequences can't really be calculated as they are namely anomolies, as long as the probable/valuable decision has been made. I think the careful difference here is that you are arguing that utilitarianism does not allow for the correct decision someone SHOULD HAVE made. While, in reality, it makes the maximized decision someone SHOULD make, but does not always turn out this way. It is impossible to create a system that makes maximized decisions all the time. I don't argue utilitarianism is perfect, just reasonable.