Examples Of Utilitarianism

A Paper on Utilitarianism

Three of the main moral theories in ethics are Kant’s moral theory, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics. Each of these has its own benefits and pitfalls, most of which counter the other’s strengths and weaknesses. In this paper, I will be analyzing all of these differences while presenting my own version of utilitarianism that I believe to be the best and most promising theory, as well as applying it to a real world example.

Kant’s moral theory has two main principles or formulas: the formula of the end in itself and the universal maxim principle. First, the end in itself formula speaks about the duty that all people have to treat people as the ends and not just the means to an end. The universal maxim principle states

that when faced with any moral situation, we must act in a way that would we could will into being the decision that all people would make if put into that same situation. Kant also believed that any obligations or duties that we have should be possible, or as he put it “ought implies can.” This theory does have some contradictions with it though. For example, if you were to lie in order to get something you wanted, then you would be universalizing lying for self-benefit, which would in turn make lying a very ineffective way of getting what you want since everyone would be lying to everyone.

Similarly, if everyone was responsible for only themselves, unless it could benefit them, then everyone in the world would be much harsher and much colder to other people. Utilitarianism is slightly different though. It is more about producing the best results. Utilitarianism states that it is everyone’s duty to do what would improve the worlds overall utility, or the overall well-being of everyone in the world. This can be split into two different versions: act and rule utilitarianism. Act utilitarianism can be defined as believing that an action is morally right when it causes the most good for the most people. Rule utilitarianism is the belief that an action is morally right only if it adheres to a rule that leads to the most good. This, similar to Kant’s moral theory, also has some objections to it. One of these is the absurd implications objection, which states that utilitarianism can be rejected because otherwise, we would have to accept the absurd implications such as if two acts both result in the same amount of utility gained worldwide, and the only difference between the two is one of them involves lying

and the other involves telling the truth, then utilitarianism would say that the acts are equal, even though lying is intrinsically bad and telling the truth is intrinsically good (345, Cahn). Another is the no rest objection, which discusses the fact that according to utilitarianism, it could be interpreted that people should never take a break and never rest because they could be doing something in that time that would have more utility (344, Cahn). For example, instead of sleeping at night, you could make food to deliver to the soup kitchen in the morning. The last of the main three ethic theories is the virtue ethics. It states that when deciding what we ought to do, we should consider how we ought to be (350, Cahn). It can involve, in some situations, looking to others who have the traits you are trying to embody and trying to emulate them. The main criticism or challenge of virtue theory is that it fails to fit into what we know about how best to explain human behavior (351, Cahn). The main differences between all of these theories is that the main thought behind Kant’s theory is that you look at the maxims our actions, whereas Utilitarianism’s main idea is to look at the amount of good or utility each action would cause. Virtue theory, however, looks at other people’s actions and lives to decide the best course of action.
The most promising ethic theory to me is utilitarianism. I believe that the beliefs behind utilitarianism are in the right place. However, there is the problem of the no rest and absurd implication objections. In response to the first objection, I would alter standard utilitarianism by making it where one should do whatever they need to improve the total utility in the world provided that they do not encroach upon their own basic needs. This would allow people who follow the utilitarian doctrine to not have to sacrifice their own health in order to attempt to improve other people’s health. In response to the other objection, the absurd implication objection, I would say that in the provided example between the two options that provide equal utility with one lying and one telling the truth, I would argue that under my revised version, not only are the two equal in many situations, but also that in some cases, lying is the correct answer to choose. For an extreme example, someone comes up to you and says that they saw you trying to break into their house and that if you are, they would shoot you right where you were standing. For this example, we will say that if they shot you, their happiness would increase for having protected his family and your happiness would increase if you didn’t get shot, setting the two equal to each other. So I feel that it is safe to say that almost everyone would say they were not that person, regardless of the truth of that statement. In my version of utilitarianism, this would be a perfectly ethical response since it is in your best interest to lie since the alternative would require you risking your health and well-being. These are two of the main objections to utilitarianism. I will however address on last objection just to further prove my theory’s revision is solid. The last objection that I will address is the integrity objection, which states that utilitarianism could cause people to violate their core principles. The example given is that you are told that you must either kill one person to free nineteen or all twenty will die by someone else’s hand. You would also have the option to try to use the gun to free the twenty, which would surely kill you (346, Cahn). To address the obvious, my version could not allow the last option to happen as it would bring harm to one’s self. The other two pose an interesting argument. The basic utilitarian view would say that you are required to shoot the one person to free the nineteen. However, revised utilitarianism would state that, if it would cause a person mental scarring or otherwise an inability to live with one’s self from the act of shooting someone, it would be perfectly acceptable to abstain from shooting someone, regardless of how many lives it cost. This covers the main three objections to utilitarianism.
Many would say that this works great in theory, but not in practice.

For that reason, I will apply my theory to a practical moral dilemma, the abortion debate. The first thing that needs to be said is that, according to my theory, if giving birth to the child would bring medical risks to the mother or child, there would be an obligation to receive the abortion. The same argument could be given for aborting, saying that if the abortion would harm the mother, it would be better to keep than to bring harm to one’s self. Now, the main argument against abortion is that a fetus is a human being that has done nothing wrong and innocent human beings should never be killed. A good argument against this was formed by Jarvis Thomson, which provides the following example: You wake up in bed with a famous violinist, who has a fatal kidney problem and you are the only person who can save him. So his people kidnap you and hook your kidneys up to his to help circulate the poison out of his blood. It would take nine months to get all of the poison out of his system. It would obviously be a nice thing to do to allow them to keep using your kidneys, but is it your obligation to help this person, even if you don’t want to (394, Cahn)? My theory states that it isn’t required that you would help this person. Sure, it would be the nice thing to do but you are not in any way obligated to stay this way. The utility this man would gain would be offset, if not negated, by the drop in utility you

would experience from having to stay bedridden with this man for nine months. Granted, this is more akin to a pregnancy by rape, so to address the standard pregnancy, we must look at what a right to life really means. Does it mean that everyone deserves the right to life or the right to be born? The difference between the two is that a the right to life implies having the bare minimum needs to continue living while the right to be born would mean they have nothing beyond their birth and whatever the mother can provide. My theory determines if you don’t have the capability to care and provide for the child at least to the bare necessities, you don’t have an obligation to keep it. Actually, you would be more so obligated to abort the child rather than bring it into the world that it would suffer in, thereby decreasing the global utility. However, there are still cases that an abortion would be morally wrong according to my theory. For example, if you have the means and wealth to support and nurture this child, then it would be absolutely wrong for you to have an abortion. Going back to the example of the violinist, say that he only needed one hour of your time and it had no risk on your health. You would almost be obligated to help this man since it would increase the global utility. Granted, you were kidnapped and you did not give permission for them to use your kidneys, but you could save this man’s life by giving an hour of your time (402, Cahn). How would it be any different than spending an hour in a soup kitchen feeding the starving? Now it may be true that pregnancy lasts for more than one hour, but if it causes no harm to yourself, it was not forced upon you, and you can care for it, utilitarianism would argue that you should keep it. This is definitely not all cases and arguments for and against abortion, however this does briefly give my revised utilitarian views on abortion.
Many would say that utilitarianism is not the strongest moral theory. I do however hope that hearing the inclusion of self-preservation to it has caused some people to give this theory a second thought. As John Mill had originally thought when he developed utilitarianism, moral choices should be about more than if everybody should do them in that scenario, but instead about producing the most happiness from every action that is possible.