Ethical Dilemmas Of Utilitarianism And The Fire Call

Picture yourself going out for coffee on a normal New York city afternoon, you stumble upon a high intensity scene. You see a man lying on the sidewalk motionless with a crowd surrounding them. There is a woman who appears to be yelling at a fireman who is washing a fire truck just across the street. As soon as you get closer to the scene you realize there are no First responders or EMS workers near the lifeless man. This presents you with an ethical dilemma since you are Ethical egoist, you chose to stand by and watch, although you question this decision as soon as it is made. This is a very odd situation since there are fireman just across the street and you know this man needs medical attention. After what seemed to be forever an ambulance arrived and firsts responders were on scene. Only minutes after they arrived they had the man stabilized and loaded in the ambulance and on their way. A few short …show more content…
In the situation where the fireman is dispatched to aa fire call under this point of view he will take the fire call because there will be the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people effected. For example, if he were to save the man’s life on the street and ignore the dispatch, there would be a great amount of people potentially dying to save one single man’s life. This can be translated to the women’s point of view as well. if the woman demands that the fireman help her dying father, instead of taking the fire call. Wouldn’t she be ethically wrong with a utilitarian approach to this situation? Even though her father is dying wouldn’t she also be morally effected by the decision? The people he didn’t respond to are now hurt so her father could live. The women would be effected because the fireman ignored the 911 call to save her father’s life but in the end he died anyways but also the dispatch call wasn’t responded to intern the other people died as well. there is one more theory we can bring up that is Ethical