Scenario: There are a group of people on a lifeboat and the boat is sinking. There is also a 400 pound man on the boat. The problem is the boat can only hold ten normal size people. Having said that, the group has to come up with a decision for their survival; so what should they do? Below are the conversations among the passengers.
Consequentialist: If this man is too heavy and he’s going to make the lifeboat sink, we need to decide what to do. Should we throw him overboard? We have to save ourselves. Morally we know that if we throw him overboard he will drown and we will be responsible for his death. I’ve always believed that “Thou shall not kill” – one of the Ten Commandments. Let’s suppose we do throw him overboard and the boat still sinks? Why should all of us drown when it’s only one of him? I think we should pray that someone will come along and save us. Let’s weigh our options because it’s wrong to throw him overboard. “Hence Consequentialism is opposed to common sense and so is probably wrong” (Foot 1967).
Nonconsequentialist – Why shouldn’t we throw this man overboard? He’s the heaviest person in the lifeboat. Who cares if we do throw this 400 pound man overboard, he’s the reason the boat is sinking. It’s morally wrong to throw someone overboard regardless but who cares? It doesn’t matter whether it’s immoral because we all want to live; and if it takes getting rid of one person, so be it. It feels right to throw him overboard to save ourselves. So what if we get charged with murder, it’s him or us.
In response to my decision, I still feel it is not a good idea to throw someone overboard. To do that one has to have no conscience and this would cause an innocent persons’ demise because he surely would not survive ...
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In conclusion, I believe killing an innocent person to save others is wrong. Having said that would his demise guarantee the others will be saved? If you’re in a sinking lifeboat, your first thought is to get rid of all of the heavy objects in the lifeboat. But what’s to say if we did, the lifeboat still wouldn’t sink? Nevertheless an innocent person would be dead. Second scenario, we have two different groups of people: one group (Consequentialists), who think it was okay for Manning to do what he did; and the other group (Nonconsequentialists) who were appalled by his actions. However my questions are: in the end will throwing a 400 lb. person overboard save the other people on the lifeboat, or in Private Manning’s case, did his exposing “top secret information” do more harm than good? The answer is: it’s according to who’s coming up with the answer.
In “Consequentialism and Integrity,” Bernard Williams criticizes consequentialism on the ground that it is inherently unreasonable due to its insistence on negative responsibility, and as a result, denies the agent integrity. Peter Railton’s “Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality” is a response to Williams and a defense of consequentialism. In the following essay, I will explain Williams’s attack on consequentialism, and Railton’s argument that consequentialism need not deny the agent integrity. I will then consider an objection to Railton’s argument, and then evaluate a possible Railtonian response.
In the case of Cassandra C, she is faced with a curable cancer, Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Without treatment this cancer is deadly, surely killing her if she does not seek said treatment. This is where the dilemma of the Cassandra C case begins, she deems the treatment, chemotherapy, as poisonous to the body and refuses to do the treatment. The court overrules her negligence and she is forced to undergo chemotherapy. With that said, I am going to give the correct course of action regarding the perspective of utilitarianism and how non-consequentialism fails in this specific case.
Peter Singer organizes his arguments into an outline form allowing a reader to take individual thoughts, adding them together giving a “big picture.” Within the first few pages, Singer shares two guiding assumptions in regards to his argument to which I stated above. The first assumption states “that suffering and death from lack of food, shelter and medical care are bad” (231). Singer steps away from the typical writing style; he states the assumption yet he does not give a personal comment in regards to the assumption. He chooses to do so because the assumption itself is surely uncontroversial; most people would agree, but to those who don’t agree, there are so many possibilities at which to arrive to this assumption that, after all, if they don’t yet comprehend its truth, it would be hard to convince them of its accuracy. Speaking for myself, if I encountered an individual that does not agree to the assumption that death by avoidable causes is bad; I would not hesitate to declare them of being heartless. There are many cases, whether across oceans on foreign land or areas to which we live, where people are dying because of inescapable, unfortunate reasons. Within such cases, even a possible little voice in the back of the head can lead one to wonder who has the responsibility of helping those who are enduring such unnecessary deaths. This sense of wonder leads us to Singer’s second assumption; “if it is in our power to prevent something from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it” (231). To better clarify what this assumption is looking for, Singer points out that “It requires u...
John Stuart Mill’s utilitarian belief that the moral thing to do is that which creates the greatest amount of happiness to greatest number of people, as well as, Immanuel Kant’s belief that murder is always morally wrong. In Rescue II, where the one individual is trapped on the path leading to the party of the five that need to be rescued; John Stuart Mill would suggest running over the one individual to save the party of five. His belief that saving the party of five would create the greatest amount of happiness to the greatest number people or vice versa; that saving the party of five would create the least amount of suffering to the least amount of people is absurd. While John Stuart Mill has a great point with his views; this is still considered murder and or killing. Murder is defined as the unlawful killing of one human being by another; and according to Immanuel Kant, the majority of the population, and the laws it is morally wrong. I concur that Immanuel Kant’s belief that murder is morally wrong. Kant says “I cannot, therefore, dispose in any way of a man in my own person so as to mutilate him, to damage or kill him” (Kant). This statement does in fact coincide with one of universal law. In no way, shape, or form would it be acceptable to murder one individual to save the lives of the party of five. Making the choice to prioritize the value of one individual’s life over
In a condition known as the “lifeboat situation” a choice must be made whether to override any animal’s rights. Tom Regan uses the lifeboat situation to argue in favor of the condition to override any animal’s rights. An example of the lifeboat situation Regan defends is a ship at sea capsizes and four humans and one dog...
...to save 19 lives or not kill at all by letting the sheriff kill, both cases are down to the person in this situation to weigh their decision. Moreover, whatever one decides to do in this case is down to their personal values. If a person feels moral justification for their act, then they would act on that principle. Every aspect has this main feature; a person has to live with their decision. Therefore, the value that one puts on their morality is more important than the act or the consequences.
On April 24th, 2014, one simple recording released by TMZ made Donald Sterling, owner of the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers, the most hated man in America. In this recording, Sterling ranted over the fact how he did not want V. Stiviano, his partner, to be affiliated with any African Americans. As a result of his racist statements, fans, athletes, and sports organizations/members, voiced their opinions on the matter, flourishing social media. Many star players such as LeBron James, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and a majority the Clippers players acknowledged that something had to be done, and that the NBA is no place for racism. In the end, after team owners took a vote, NBA commissioner Adam Silver held a press conference enlightening the public
When I was working as a Customer Service Representative in the Bank, one of my responsibilities was to supervise the tellers. I was friends with two of the tellers working there at the time. We used to go out together outside of work and had great time. At some point I started noticing that they are being too friendly with each other and acting inappropriate for a professional environment. I decided to confront them and they confessed to me that they were dating. That is when I realized that I was faced with an ethical dilemma.
To show that consequentialism squares with the commonsense moral rules used by deontology or “moral absolutism,” Nielsen assumes, as many do, that outside of cases where one may has to choose the lesser of two evils, consequentialists generally make the same moral decisions as deontologists. He alluded to this general understanding when he wrote that “a consequentialist has very good utilitarian grounds for being so appalled” at acts like the “judicial execution” or “punishment, torture, and killing of the innocent,” but we should consider this assumption to be a premise in his argument so that the argument will be represented here with its full force.
Death is an unusually severe punishment, unusual in its pain, in its finality, and in its enormity. The fatal constitutional infirmity in the punishment of death is that it treats 'members of the human race as non humans, as objects to be toyed with and discarded . It is thus inconsistent with the fundamental premise of the Clause that even the vilest criminal remains a human being possessed of common human dignity. As such it is a penalty that 'subjects the individual to a fate forbidden by the principle of civilized treatment guaranteed by the [Clause]. Therefore, death is today a cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Clause. The ethical question here is, “Is the death penalty violating our very own amendments?”
Moreover, in consequentialist normative principles " it require us that we first tally both the good and bad consequences of an action." Then, identify if the "total good consequences outweigh the total bad consequences." If based in our analysis the good "consequences are greater," then "the action is morally proper. In the given situation, stealing for food for a hungry child suggest plenty of good consequences when we try to focus on the true and good intention of the agent. We may think that he is good because he/she is trying to save only the boy from hunger or even from tragic death. Thus, millions of children around the world had died because of
According to the theory of consequentialism, “an action is morally required just because it produces the best overall results” (Landau, 2015, p.121). In this view, an individual’s action is deemed moral only if it produces the optimific result in any situation. In the article “Framing Effect in the Trolley Problem and Footbridge Dilemma,” the authors introduced the “Footbridge Dilemma”, wherein an individual is given the option to save the lives of five workers by pushing an innocent man towards an incoming trolley (Cao, et. al, 2017, p. 90). In this dilemma, consequentialism suggests that it is moral to push the innocent man and save the workers. Even though pushing the man would kill him, the action would yield the optimific outcome in that
In 1842 a tragedy occurred when a ship struck an iceberg and more than thirty passengers piled onto a rescue boat that was meant to hold a maximum of seven people. As a storm became evident and water rushed into the lifeboat, it was clear that in order for anyone to survive the load would need to be lightened. The commanding captain suggested that some people would need to be thrown overboard in order for anyone to survive. There was a great argument on the boat between the captain and the passengers who opposed his decision. Some suggested that the weakest should be drowned, as miles of rowing the lifeboat would take toll on even the strongest. This reasoning would also make it absurd to draw names of who should be thrown over. Others suggested that if they all stayed onboard no one would be responsible for the deaths, although the captain argued he would be guilty if those who he could have saved perished in the process. Alternatively the captain decided that the weakest would be sacrificed in order to save the few left on the lifeboat. Days later the survivors were rescued and the captain was put on trial for his virtues.
It does not matter if the greatest, or the least "good" would result from such an act. I hold to the belief that all human beings are intrinsically valuable. This is due to the fact that I, as a Christian, believe that all humans are created in the image of God. But before we go too far we must first accurately define our terms. Murder is always wrong, but it is not always wrong to kill. These two concepts are different. Part of the problem I had with the professor and his hypothetical stories was that he never even discussed the possibility that murder and killing were two different things. The fact is that even our judicial system makes such distinctions when they decide between, what is called murder and manslaughter. "Manslaughter is an unlawful killing that doesn’t involve malice aforethought—intent to seriously harm or kill, or extreme, reckless disregard for life. The absence of malice aforethought means that manslaughter involves less moral blame than either first or second degree murder.” (Berman) Murder on the other hand is defined as "the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought.” (Merriam-Webster’s collegiate dictionary. (Eleventh ed.).,
Consequentialism is an ethical theory that evaluates the consequences of a person’s action to determine if their actions are right or wrong (Slote 34). According to the theory, a morally right act is one that has more good outcomes than bad ones. In this ethical theory, the end justifies the means; hence, it argues that people should first determine the good and bad consequences of actions before they do them. After determining the total outcomes, it is important to investigate whether the total good consequences are more. If the good ones outweigh the bad ones, then that action is morally right, but if it is the reverse, then the action is morally wrong.