Utilitarianism In Exercise 7

In Exercise 7, Sherman is producing and advertising a pill that he claims cures cancer. He knows the pill doesn’t cure cancer, but he’s still selling it because he knows that desperate cancer patients will still buy the pill. Sherman’s reasoning is that the patients might die anyways and the pill is giving them hope. The pill is harmless so it won’t hurt them. Also, he thinks he wont get caught or punished for it. He thinks he will make millions in a fairly short amount of time selling the pills. There is different point of views for why Sherman is wrong. “According to Utilitarianism, moral right and wrong are determined solely by the balance between increases and decreases in the well-being of everyone affected, that is, the total well-being” (83). Within

Then, later on in the day he decides that it would produce more total well- being for him to work at a kitchen that feeds the homeless instead of taking you to the doctor. An advantage of Act Utilitarianism is that there is only one moral principle so it can’t with another rule. Another version of Utilitarianism is Rule Utilitarianism. “Rule Utilitarianism says that we should obey correct moral principle” (90). “Rule Utilitarianism is applied to kinds of actions” (83). There is a difference in act and rule utilitarianism. “Act Utilitarianism has us apply only one moral principle or rule: maximize total well-being, and as we have seen, critics find that problematic” (90). For example, “suppose that Sabrina is considering killing her uncle. He is the most hated man in town because he’s miser who often sues people for trivial things. Although he wants to go on living, he id old and sickly, suffering from painful maladies and depression. She’s convinced that he’d be better off dead. She has a drug that will make it appear that he died of a heart attack, so there’s no chance of her being caught. His fortune will be left to her, and she will use the money for various charitable