The two moral theories we really took inspiration from is Ethical Egoism, and Utilitarianism. Ethical Egoism is serving your own self interests, and to be moral in this theory is to act in our own self interests, and is immoral not too.
Utilitarianism is a theory that focuses on maximizing pleasure for the most amount of people, and minimizing pain for the most amount of people. The way Utilitarianism does this is by looking at the consequences for the action you are going to do. One was the consequences are calculated are by using Bentham's Hedonistic Calculus, which is like a set of questions that can help lead you towards what the outcome may be. So the theory we came up with is “You ought to serve your own self interests up until the …show more content…
When you apply our theory to it, you can’t be an Ethical Egoist in this situation because the 5 men’s lives are at stake down the track, so that means you must look at it from a Utilitarianist viewpoint. If you push the fat man off the bridge, you’ll have the unhappiness of his family and the unhappiness from yourself since you physically pushed him off. On the other hand, have 5 people die, and all of their families being affected is much more unhappiness in the world. So the only choice is you must push the fat man off the …show more content…
For example, in the trolley problem, no one would want to directly push a man off a bridge. But the theory would make you, even if you don't want to. Most people put in that situation wouldn't probably go through with it, and push the man off the bridge because not many people would be able to directly kill someone in most situations. If they have the choice not too, why would they? Why wouldn't they just let someone else who follows the same moral theory and let them push the man off the bridge? You could say that the bystander effect may affect them as well, which is when something bad is happening like 2 people fighting in the street, and a crowd starts to gather and people know they should break the fight up, but people tend to think, well I don't need to do anything and someone else will break it up, but everyone thinks that and nothing comes of it. So if there's a group of people standing on the bridge with the fat man on the edge, and for the sake of the example, they all follow our moral theory, what obligates just one person to push the man off? Should they all push the man off together? If one person is chosen to push the man of the ledge, would his happiness then be considered not equal to everyone else in the crowd? To me, I believe that's the biggest problem with this moral theory, that sometimes you’ll have to do things that you absolutely do not want to do if you want
Utilitarianism is a theory that focuses on maximizing pleasure for the most amount of people, and minimizing pain for the most amount of people. The way Utilitarianism does this is by looking at the consequences for the action you are going to do. One was the consequences are calculated are by using Bentham's Hedonistic Calculus, which is like a set of questions that can help lead you towards what the outcome may be. So the theory we came up with is “You ought to serve your own self interests up until the …show more content…
When you apply our theory to it, you can’t be an Ethical Egoist in this situation because the 5 men’s lives are at stake down the track, so that means you must look at it from a Utilitarianist viewpoint. If you push the fat man off the bridge, you’ll have the unhappiness of his family and the unhappiness from yourself since you physically pushed him off. On the other hand, have 5 people die, and all of their families being affected is much more unhappiness in the world. So the only choice is you must push the fat man off the …show more content…
For example, in the trolley problem, no one would want to directly push a man off a bridge. But the theory would make you, even if you don't want to. Most people put in that situation wouldn't probably go through with it, and push the man off the bridge because not many people would be able to directly kill someone in most situations. If they have the choice not too, why would they? Why wouldn't they just let someone else who follows the same moral theory and let them push the man off the bridge? You could say that the bystander effect may affect them as well, which is when something bad is happening like 2 people fighting in the street, and a crowd starts to gather and people know they should break the fight up, but people tend to think, well I don't need to do anything and someone else will break it up, but everyone thinks that and nothing comes of it. So if there's a group of people standing on the bridge with the fat man on the edge, and for the sake of the example, they all follow our moral theory, what obligates just one person to push the man off? Should they all push the man off together? If one person is chosen to push the man of the ledge, would his happiness then be considered not equal to everyone else in the crowd? To me, I believe that's the biggest problem with this moral theory, that sometimes you’ll have to do things that you absolutely do not want to do if you want