Just what, If Anything, Is Wrong with Y and Z’s Proposal in John Harris's Survival Lottery

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Utilitarianism in its simplest form, claims that the morally right action is that which produces the greatest good, but questions not what the means are to achieve it. Jeremy Bentham and later John Stuart Mill are regarded as the founders of modern utilitarianism and believe that the greatest good is pleasure. John Stuart Mill (1806-73), states that utilitarianism is the moral theory that “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” John Harris’s proposes a ‘survival lottery’ which would minimise the overall number of deaths in a society by arbitrarily sacrificing individuals so their organs can be used to ‘give life’ to others. Therefore more lives would be saved by the transplants than the amount taken by sacrifice. This is a rational proposal but one which faces much objection because of the moral issues raised, specifically the belief that it is wrong to kill and the importance of human life. This essay will argue that it is reasonable to suggest that a proposal that saves lives is desirable, and that killing one to save three or four is arguably the doctors duty or moral responsibility. Despite all of this, human beings will never accept this scheme either as a loss of liberty or because valuable resources could potentially be wasted on those undeserving of them.

John Harris visualises a world where transplant operations are faultless and that anyone who needs a transplant can have the operation successfully providing that there are the suitable organs accessible, if not the doctor would have to let them die. Y and Z refuse to accept this inevitable death and argue on utilitarian grounds that it is better if one human dies and donates his organ...

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...this in itself produces less happiness. Consequently, the main problem with the proposal no matter how desirable it is, human beings will always refuse to accept it purely because of moral beliefs that killing is wrong and Peter Singers main argument that valuable resources could potentially be wasted on those undeserving of them.

Works Cited

• Mill, John Stuart. “Of What Sort of Proof the Principle of Utility is Susceptible,” in Utilitarianism. London: Parker, Son, and Bourn, 1863.
• Bennet, Jonathon ‘Whatever the consequence’ Analysis (1966)
• Scarre, Geoffrey, Utilitarianism (Chatham: Routledge, 1996.)
• Harris, John. The survival lottery, philosophy 50 (1975)
• Harris, John. The survival lottery, philosophy 50 (1975)
• Singer, Peter. Utility and the Survival Lottery. Vol. 52 (1977)
• Quinton, Anthony. Utilitarian Ethics. Trowbridge: Macmillan. (1989.)

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