Utilitarianism and Kant’s deontological theory are both similar and conflicting in their own ways. The two proposals hold grounds that serve as foundational moral theories.
Within utilitarianism, there is a way of quantifying pleasure and pain in order to apply the GHP. This group provides qualities of pleasure such as intensity, duration, certainty, and propinquity of pleasure. These qualities translate to how hard, how long, how reasonable, and how soon. Within ethical decision making these principles are acquired. If you have three decisions: to go to BSU, to work, go to different school. You decipher the pros and cons of the situation and apply them numerically based on most radical change positive or negative. Then one proceeds with …show more content…
For example, there are five terminally ill patients in care at a hospital and a sixth person walks into the same hospital only to receive a routine check up. A transplant surgeon in the residence finds that only medical means of saving the five dying patients would be to remove the healthy organs from the sixth patient and transplant them into the five terminally ill patients. Loose one life and save five. Legal ramifications and other outside disruptions are disregarded. We must ask the question: would we like to live in a world where this principle was applied? Another example of this theory is a runaway train heading straight for five people who are using jackhammers and are completely oblivious. You cannot move these five civilians, but you do have the opportunity to pull the lever and switch which direction the train is going. If you pull the lever, then the train will switch tracks and head the opposite direction for one oblivious person who is also jackhammering in the way of the caravan. Do you pull the lever? Within utilitarianism, we focus on the greatest outcome and in these specific cases, it would be to save the greatest number of people. When weighing out the pros and cons of this theory we find that not everyone wants to play God and have their hand take control of the situation. We are also unaware of who these people are and if they bring the greatest number of happiness in their lives. The five people could be world dictators and mass murders, or it can be your family members. These personal factors cannot affect the decision made because the only rule that is regarded in this theory was the greatest number of happiness. Personally, I find utilitarianism contradicting because in the transplant example, if I was the sixth person I would not think that it was the greater decision because
Within utilitarianism, there is a way of quantifying pleasure and pain in order to apply the GHP. This group provides qualities of pleasure such as intensity, duration, certainty, and propinquity of pleasure. These qualities translate to how hard, how long, how reasonable, and how soon. Within ethical decision making these principles are acquired. If you have three decisions: to go to BSU, to work, go to different school. You decipher the pros and cons of the situation and apply them numerically based on most radical change positive or negative. Then one proceeds with …show more content…
For example, there are five terminally ill patients in care at a hospital and a sixth person walks into the same hospital only to receive a routine check up. A transplant surgeon in the residence finds that only medical means of saving the five dying patients would be to remove the healthy organs from the sixth patient and transplant them into the five terminally ill patients. Loose one life and save five. Legal ramifications and other outside disruptions are disregarded. We must ask the question: would we like to live in a world where this principle was applied? Another example of this theory is a runaway train heading straight for five people who are using jackhammers and are completely oblivious. You cannot move these five civilians, but you do have the opportunity to pull the lever and switch which direction the train is going. If you pull the lever, then the train will switch tracks and head the opposite direction for one oblivious person who is also jackhammering in the way of the caravan. Do you pull the lever? Within utilitarianism, we focus on the greatest outcome and in these specific cases, it would be to save the greatest number of people. When weighing out the pros and cons of this theory we find that not everyone wants to play God and have their hand take control of the situation. We are also unaware of who these people are and if they bring the greatest number of happiness in their lives. The five people could be world dictators and mass murders, or it can be your family members. These personal factors cannot affect the decision made because the only rule that is regarded in this theory was the greatest number of happiness. Personally, I find utilitarianism contradicting because in the transplant example, if I was the sixth person I would not think that it was the greater decision because