Consequentialist And Categorical Reasoning In Michael Sandel's Moral

During Michael Sandel’s lecture, the two moral reasoning’s he described was Consequentialist and Categorical moral reasoning. According to Sandel, Consequentialist moral reasoning locates morality in the consequence of an act, while Categorical moral reasoning located morality in certain duties and rights. (Harvard University (Producer), n.d.)

To explain these moral reasoning’s he used scenarios. His first scenario was about a “you” driving a trolley car with broken brakes, would you turn the trolley to kill one worker or continue to go straight and kill five workers. Majority would choose to turn, believing it will be better to kill one instead of five. This belief would be an example of Consequentialist, because the end would show why they

This is Categorical moral reasoning because killing is simply wrong. Some even tried to switch the scenario around because they focused on the “intrinsic quality or character of the act matters morality”. This shows that in different situations it could be wrong even if it’s the best result. (Harvard University (Producer), n.d.)

Sandel then speaks about the philosophy of utilitarianism, by Jeremy Bentham. Bentham’s idea is that the right thing to do is to maximize the balance of pleasure over pain or happiness over suffering. He supported his idea stating every human has pleasure and pain, while liking pleasure and not pain. The overall summary of Bentham’s idea is “the greatest good for the greatest number”, believing you should make the best of the levels of happiness. To support Bentham’s theory by telling a real life story about the case of “The Queen versus Dudley and Stephens”. The story was about 4 men being stuck on a lifeboat with two cans of turnips. There was a captain (Dudley), a first mate (Stephans), a sailor (Brookes), and the last was a Richard Parcher, the cabin boy who was

The Tragedy of the Commons “is a problem that occurs when individuals exploit a shared resource to the extent that demand overwhelms supply and the resource becomes unavailable to some or all” (Wigmore, 2013, August). He explains if by using an example of herdsman caring for their cattle in a common land owned by others. Everyone in the land have the same number of cattle they are allowed to have. If one herdsman was being self-centered things and had more cattle because he was thinking of his needs would then damage the community by “overloading it, erosion set in, weeds take over, and he loses the use of the pasture. He would just worry about his goals now and not the overall outcome which not only affected him, but the other herdsmen as well. (Hardin, 1974,