Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism people involved

Jeremy Bentham (1748- 1832)
John Stuart Mill (1806- 1873)

The Trolley Thought Experiment expalnation

There is a runaway trolley heading down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks,
there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for
them. You are standing some distance off in the train
yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a
different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the
side track. You have two options:
1) Do nothing and allow the trolley to kill the five people on the main track.
2) Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person.
 Which is the more ethical option?
 Or, more simply:
 What is the right thing to do?

The Trolley Thought Experiment

• TROLLEY EXPERIMENT: Utilitarianism 

• HOMELESS EXPERIMENT: Deontological or Kantian ethics because the action of killing is categorically and unconditionally wrong, no matter how many people could be saved you should not kill the homeless guy 

• Principle of Identity (A = A)

• Moral intuition tells us that the result or consequence of an action matters 

TROLLEY EXPERIMENT:

Utilitarianism

HOMELESS EXPERIMENT:

Deontological or Kantian ethics because the action of killing is categorically and unconditionally wrong, no matter how many people could be saved you should not kill the homeless guy 

The Patient Thought Experiment

Now imagine that we have one patient in emergency room
with some minor health problem that it will go away within
hours. In the the same hospital, we have five patients in
critical conditions that all need organ transplantations, and
if they do not receive organs, they will die shortly. The
patient in the emergency room would be a perfect donor for
these patients and could save them all.
 Now, is it permissible to kill the healthy patient to save five
others? Is it the right thing to do?

The purpose of morality is to

guide people’s actions in such a way as to produce a better world (minimize suffering and pain and maximize
happiness /pleasure)

the emphasis in utilitarianism is on

producing consequences, not having good intentions
or acting for the sake of duty, or out of reverence for
the moral law (the Categorical Imperative) duty or
focusing on action itself.

Basic Insight utilitarianism

• Maximize good and minimize harm 

The Principle of Utility

• One should always act in such a way as to bring about or maximize the greatest good and the least harm for the greatest number of people 

• On exams you may be asked to state principle utility!!!!!

The Nature of the Good

• Principle of utility does not specify the nature of the good 

• As a result:
  1) Hedonistic Utilitarianism
  2) Eudaemonistic Utilitarianism
  3) Ideal Utilitarianism (we will not discuss)
  4) Preference Utilitarianism (we will not discuss

Hedonistic Utilitarianism

• Bentham’s utilitarianism is hedonistic because it
  assumes that the rightness of an action depends
  entirely on the amount of pleasure it tends to produce
  and the amount of pain it tends to prevent

  • Note that Bentham describes not only the good as
    pleasure, but also as happiness, benefit, advantage, etc. He treats these concepts as more or less synonymous, and seems to think of them as reducible to pleasure.

Hedonism:

The idea that pleasure or happiness is the good that we seek

Bentham’s Hedonistic Calculus