there are no winners

Imagine that you are a passenger on a flight headed to a major city. Hijackers take over the cockpit and the pilots are left murdered. The hijackers begin to terrorize the passengers on the plane. They plan to drop nuclear bombs down onto the major city you are headed to. They make it clear that, they in no way want to die, and therefore all passengers besides the pilots will survive the flight. You and other passengers discuss that together you can stop the hijackers from dropping the nuclear bombs. Unfortunately, you all are faced with a tough decision. You all know that if you allow these hijackers to drop the bombs you will survive, but if you overthrow them you all will die but will save an entire city. What would you do in this situation? Would you, save yourself in an aircraft consisting of 300 other passengers or sacrifice your life in order to save 8 million other people living in the city?

For the sake of this paper, we will chose that we overthrew the hijackers and saved the city, but everyone on the airplane passed away. In the end we maximized happiness and reduced a great amount of suffering because we did not let 8 million people die, rather only 300 died. The decision made by all on the aircraft seems to have been, “for the greater good of mankind,” and this type of thinking stems from a utilitarian mindset.

Utilitarianism holds the belief that what is important, is what benefits the most people. Jeremy Bentham, a British philosopher has been credited as the founder of modern utilitarianism. In Bentham’s, A Fragment on Government, he states the philosophy of utilitarianism as, "fundamental axiom, it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong." Bentham claims that ...

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...on people in the city, their actions caused more pleasure or happiness than if they would have saved themselves and let the city be destroyed by the nuclear bombs. Mill believes in qualitative hedonism and thinks that pleasures can be ranked. He believes that there are some pleasures that outweigh others. In this scenario, it is clear that saving the city outweighs the survival of the travelers on the flight.

In all situations it is difficult to make a decision because most of the time it is a dilemma within itself to choose what is beneficial for all parties involved. Since utilitarianism is all about promoting the "greatest amount of good" these leaves parties in pain and suffering. Overall it seems like no matter what choice is made, somehow someone loses and suffers.

Works Cited

Bentham, Jeremy (1776). A Fragment on Government. London., Preface (2nd para.).