Pros And Cons Of Utilitarianism

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Utilitarianism tries to ensure happiness for the general majority, but utilitarianism is not soundly applicable in all situations. It tries to judge the happiest outcome of all situations, but is flawed in its basic reasoning. It is nearly impossible to judge the benefit of one decision over another in all situations. Here we see the trolley problem. A trolley or a train has gotten loose and is hurtling down the track. Ahead there are five people on the track. When the utilitarian in the problem looks over there is another track with only one person on it. The utilitarian is in the trolley house with the option of switching the tracks to hit one person as opposed to five. With this simple illustration, the utilitarian would switch the lever. The philosophy behind switching the lever is simple to the utilitarian. He switches the lever and causes the train only kill the one man because he is only one man, and surely less people will be affected by his death than by the five people’s deaths. But in truth he does not know that. That one man could be the CEO of a large …show more content…

If there was someone stealing crops in a town and the people get together and they’re about to riot, that riot could cause a lot of deaths. But say the people say we think we know who did it, yet you know that that particular person didn’t do it, but the people won’t listen, you’re faced with the option of killing an innocent person, or letting the riot get so bad that many more than just one life is at stake. A utilitarian would say that it is okay to kill the innocent person in order to the people from killing more in their riot. Yet this ignores the justice system. The sheriff here making this decision knows who did it and from justice’s point of view, they should say no to the crowd, prosecute the proper person, and if people are killed in the ensuing riot punish the people responsible. To justice killing that innocent human is

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