Utilitarianism And The Trolley Case Analysis

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Ethics has a great impact on people whenever they are facing a difficult or biased situation. It depends on what ethical philosophies that people believe in, which would justify their actions towards a specific problem. The goal of this paper is to reflect the different responses of bystanders under two different ethical approaches, which are the utilitarianism or the deontology approach. According to the textbook (Introducing Philosophy through Pop Culture: From Socrates to South Park, Hume to House, 1st Edition), the author has used the moral dilemma of the trolley problem to examine ethical responses. (Irwin & Johnson, 2010) The trolley’s dilemma is defined as a scenario which is designed to test the morality of humanity, either killing …show more content…
The ethical philosophy of utilitarianism is simply defined as the greater good for the greatest amount of people. (Irwin & Johnson, 2010) In other words, this approach is trying to maximize the well-being and overall happiness for the people who are affected following by the acts of others. (Irwin & Johnson, 2010) On the other hand, the deontology philosophy is forbidding the acts of killing a living human even if it is for the sake of saving other human beings. (Irwin & Johnson, 2010) Overall, the consequences resulting from both actions are likely similar, which means that no matter what decision you make, someone will most likely die. My intuition tells me that supporting the utilitarian approach is the better option because saving the greatest amount of people’s lives at the cost of killing one would generally increase the overall benefits to …show more content…
(Irwin & Johnson, 2010) It is true that killing someone is not right and seemingly goes against the moral standard; however, refusing to kill Joker likely allowed him to continue to kill other civilians in the future. Joker was characterized as the crown prince of crime, who took away so many innocent lives, including Jason Todd, the second Robin. (Irwin & Johnson, 2010) Just imagine that Joker is the single person on the track and there are five innocent residents on the other side of the track, would it still be okay to let the innocent die and the murderer have the chance to survive? In this case, I found that Batman was sort of self-fish to think only of himself rather than the majority of the people. As mentioned earlier in the case in the textbook, Batman was dedicated to saving lives rather than taking away lives, regardless of good or bad guys. (Irwin & Johnson, 2010) He did not want to take any responsibility for the death of Joker because he did not want to be looked as badly as his homicidal enemy. (Irwin & Johnson, 2010) Moreover, in the situation where the life of everyone is weighted equally, we should take consideration into taking the least number of sacrifices so many other lives will be saved. (Irwin & Johnson, 2010) In addition, in online research led by Carlos David Navarrete, the assistant professor of philosophy, nearly

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