Deontology vs. Utilitarianism: Case #1 Case: You are at home one evening with your family, when all of a sudden, a man throws open the door. He’s holding a shotgun in his hands, and he points it directly at your family. It seems he hasn’t seen you yet. You quietly and carefully retrieve the pistol your father keeps in his room for home protection. Are you morally allowed to use the pistol to kill the home invader? This case is a very difficult one because it’s not just involving you but it is involving the people you love dearest. You are basically being given only two choices and that is to save your family or to watch them die. This essay will discuss the different take utilitarian’s have on the decision and the outlook deontologists have …show more content…
Mill defines utilitarianism as a theory based on the principle that "actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness."(Mill) Utilitarian’s choices and decisions are based on the results of having the maximum number of happiness to the minimal number of pain. For instance, with this case study, Utilitarianism would be pro for the shooting of the intruder. The reasoning behind this is if the intruder were to open fire on the family, there would be several casualties. Whereas if you were to shoot the intruder there would only be one casualty. This would maximize the happiness with having more lives saved, rather than the pain with more lives lost. With saving more lives you are going with the majority which is the amount of people being saved for the one life that is loss. Also Mill defines happiness as pleasure and the absence of pain. Meaning in this example that watching your family die would be extremely painful for yourself and the loved ones going through the tragedy. But saving your family would create happiness or “pleasure” because they are now safe and not in any type of danger. The pleasure of saving your family greatly outweighs the pain that would come from watching your family die. Having to mourn all the …show more content…
Everyone has duties to do things which are morally correct rather than to do things morally wrong or incorrect. Consequences are not the determinant whether an action is right or wrong but instead the action itself is the determinant whether it is right or wrong. Using the case as an example of this belief would be the fact that after shooting the intruder they are dead. No matter if they were intruding, the action itself was to grab the pistol and commit a violent act. Taking away any of the outside circumstances such as protecting your family, you still in fact murdered and killed someone. Kant’s theories recognize duties that are mostly prohibitions for example “do not lie, do not murder.” (Kant) By committing the murder in order to save your family you have now went against the deontologist rules that state do not murder. They believe in no intentional killings. Even if it does benefit the majority as a whole it is still not morally right in their theory. In Kant’s theory a killing is the action and the only exception to killing another being is if it was accidental or if you were defending yourself. Why this case is so tricky is because technically you were not defending yourself you were protecting your family because the intruder had no idea that you were in the house and also the killing is in no way accidental, because you intentionally grabbed the pistol to kill the intruder.
For more than two thousand years, the human race has struggled to effectively establish the basis of morality. Society has made little progress distinguishing between morally right and wrong. Even the most intellectual minds fail to distinguish the underlying principles of morality. A consensus on morality is far from being reached. The struggle to create a basis has created a vigorous warfare, bursting with disagreement and disputation. Despite the lack of understanding, John Stuart Mill confidently believes that truths can still have meaning even if society struggles to understand its principles. Mill does an outstanding job at depicting morality and for that the entire essay is a masterpiece. His claims throughout the essay could not be any closer to the truth.
There were some moral problems that Mill ran into with his principle. One of the first problems was that actions are right to promote happiness, but wrong as they sometimes tend to produce unhappiness. By moving a victim from a mangled car would be the noble thing to do but what if pulling him from the wreck meant killing him. He intended to produce a happy outcome, but in the end he created an unhappy situation. Utilitarianism declares that men can live just as well without happiness. Mill says yes, but men do not conduct their lives, always seeking happiness. Happiness does not always mean total bliss.
To kill or let live will explore the utilitarian views of John Stuart Mill, as well as the deontological views of Immanuel Kant on the thought experiment derived from British Philosopher Philippa Foot. Foot had great influence in the advancement of the naturalistic point of view of moral philosophy. The exploration of Philippa Foot’s Rescue I and Rescue II scenarios will provide the different views on moral philosophy through the eyes of John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant.
people’s overall happiness and this is what God desires, so in fact this theory includes God
John Stuart Mills is a philosopher who is strongly associated with utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is a philosophy which puts morality in the greater good. Often associated with sigma, the summation of benefit is the only determinant of what makes something morally right. In Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mills compares his form of utilitarianism with the Golden Rule of Jesus of Nazareth which states, “To do as you would be done by” and “To love your neighbor as yourself.” Mills states that these statements constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality. The utilitarian morality as described previously is one where everyone acts in utility. This is so that the maximum amount of happiness can be attained which would satisfies everyone’s
Kant and Mill both try to decide whether the process of doing something is distinguished as right or wrong. They explain that right or wrong is described as moral or immoral. In the writings of Grounding for the Metaphysics of morals Kant says that you only need to “act only according to the maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law” (Kant, 30). Kant then states that a practical principal for how far the human will is concerned is thereby a categorical imperative, that everyone then is necessarily an end, and the end in itself establishes an objective principal of the will and can aid as a practical law (36). Mill on the other hand has the outlook that the greatest happiness principle, or utilitarianism, is that happiness and pleasure are the freedom from pain (Mill, 186). With these principles we will see that Kant and Mill correspond and contradict each other in their moral theories.
John Stuart Mill argues that the rightness or wrongness of an action, or type of action, is a function of the goodness or badness of its consequences, where good consequences are ones that maximize the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people. In this essay I will evaluate the essential features of Mill’s ethical theory, how that utilitarianism gives wrong answers to moral questions and partiality are damaging to Utilitarianism.
John Stuart Mill, a British philosopher stated in ‘Ultarianism’ “no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructor person would be ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs”.
The Trolley Problem is a scenario possessing two similar versions that begs the question of whether or not it is ethical to kill a person in order to save five. In both versions of this problem, there is a trolley approaching a track with people tied down. In the first version there are two tracks; the first with five people tied down and the other with one person tied down, as the train is approaching the five people. Beside the track there is a switch that will cause the train to travel onto the second track, in which only one person is tied down. In the second version there is one track with the trolley approaching the five people who are tied down, except in this case there is a footbridge over the track with a person large enough to stop
John Stuart Mill claims that people often misinterpret utility as the test for right and wrong. This definition of utility restricts the term and denounces its meaning to being opposed to pleasure. Mill defines utility as units of happiness caused by an action without the unhappiness caused by an action. He calls this the Greatest Happiness Principle or the Principle of Utility. Mill’s principle states that actions are right when they tend to promote happiness and are wrong when they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. Happiness is defined as intended pleasure and the absence of pain while unhappiness is defined as pain and the lack of pleasure. Therefore, Mill claims, pleasure and happiness are the only things desirable and good. Mill’s definition of utilitarianism claims that act...
Utilitarianism states that the right actions are the ones that create the most happiness for the greatest number of people (Mill, 1871 Pg. 1072). Utilitarianism posits that actions are right because, and to the extent that; they result in good (Mill, 1871 Pg. 1072). Therefore, the right action for a utilitarian is the one that does the most good, where the most good is happiness. A utilitarian holds happiness as the highest intrinsic value, and happiness is intended to mean pleasure (Mill, 1871 Pg. 1072). An action is wrong because it promotes pain, the opposite of happiness or pl...
In his essay, Utilitarianism Mill elaborates on Utilitarianism as a moral theory and responds to misconceptions about it. Utilitarianism, in Mill’s words, is the view that »actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.«1 In that way, Utilitarianism offers an answer to the fundamental question Ethics is concerned about: ‘How should one live?’ or ‘What is the good or right way to live?’.
The ethical issues involved in the case are: categorical imperative, utilitarianism on the behalf of all aspects of the evidence presented. Categorically two people decided to do the duty of killing one person so the other three would be able to survive until rescued (IEP). The utilitarianism would be that 3 of the four had friends and family that would miss them if they would have not survived (Lee, 2000).
Act utilitarianism contends that we should act to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. This view could endorse actions such as sentencing an innocent man to death if this would produce the most amount of pleasure. Utilitarianism holds that the standard of morality is the promotion of everyone’s best interests. As formulated by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, this view holds that only pleasure or happiness has intrinsic value. More modern utilitarians hold that other things besides happiness have value, such as power or beauty. Our textbook considers only traditional utilitarianism and uses “good” to mean pleasure. Bentham held that happiness could be calculated using a hedonistic calculus, which determined
When it comes to utilitarianism, the definition or what it actually is differs from one person to another depending on their situation. It all boils down to one question: “What will make the most people the most happy?” Even though it seems like an easy question to answer, the decisions you must face in answering it are not. Should you make yourself happy or should you make others happy? Is it okay to sacrifice the happiness of a couple of people if it makes everyone else happy? What happens to the few who get sacrificed for the happiness of the many others? Philosophically speaking, utilitarianism is the belief that a morally good action is one that helps the greatest number of people. John Stuart Mill starts off by stating very little progress has been made when it comes to setting standards to judge what is morally right or wrong. Mill’s thoughts and reasoning on what he believes utilitarianism counts for, especially in the specific categories he has mentioned, are correct in many eyes.