PH 101 Bentley University The Morally Right Thing to Do Paper 1. When considering what the morally right thing to do is, should you consider the consequenc

PH 101 Bentley University The Morally Right Thing to Do Paper 1. When considering what the morally right thing to do is, should you consider the consequences in the way that the utilitarian promotes?Explain your reasoning and provide an example that supports your view. Length:Essays should be approximately 3 pages – no shorter than 750 words, no longer than 1050 words.Please provide a word count at the top of the first page.Exclude header, footer, and bibliographic information from the word count. Format:Please double-space, use a standard font setting (e.g., Times New Roman size 12), print single-sided, and staple your pages together.Citations can be in any standard form (MLA) so long as they are clear and consistent throughout.Avoid using external sources. You can use the PDF attached and then maybe 1 or 2 from outside. College level paper. Not higher or lower. Introduction and conclusion– intro should explain utilitarianism and the conclusion should summarize the whole question. GOOD
BAD
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism
Ethics: The Study of Value
• What makes something good or bad, right or wrong?
• What ought one do, in light of the above
understandings?
The source of value
• What is the source of value? What makes
something good/bad, right/wrong?
The source of value
• What is the source of value? What makes
something good/bad, right/wrong?
– Consequentialism: actions become right or wrong
depending on their real-world material
consequences.
• What kind of consequences ought we aim to promote?
– Deontology: actions become right or wrong based
on their internal logic. Material consequences
have nothing to do with morality.
The source of value
• What is the source of value? What makes
something good/bad, right/wrong?
– Consequentialism: actions become right or wrong
depending on their real-world material
consequences.
• Utilitarianism: pleasure / happiness.
• Virtue ethics: flourishing.
– Deontology: actions become right or wrong based
on their internal logic. Material consequences
have nothing to do with morality.
The Greatest Happiness Principle
• The defining principle of utilitarianism: the
morally right action is that which produces the
greatest amount of good (pleasure, happiness,
utility) for the greatest number of people.
GOOD
BAD
What Should You Do?
• A “John Doe” at your hospital has been diagnosed
with PVS (persistent vegetative state). No living will,
“do not resuscitate” order, or next of kin can be
found. He is a tissue and organ match for six patients
in the locality. Without transplants, these patients
will die.
• Do you remove life support from
John Doe in order to transplant
his organs to the six patients?
You must act quickly in order for
the organs to be salvageable.
The Decision-Making Procedure
•
•
•
•
What are your options?
Who are the individuals who will be affected?
How will each option impact each individual?
For each option, tally up how much “good” is
produced and subtract the “bad” produced.
• The option that promotes the greatest good
overall is the right one to take.
Complicating the calculation:
accounting for quality
• “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied
than a pig satisfied, better to be Socrates
dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”
< Complicating the calculation: accounting for quality • Not all pleasures are of equal quality: some are of higher value and some are of lower value. • The pleasures that are of higher value should be given more weight in the calculation. • What are these “higher pleasures?” Complicating the calculation: accounting for quality • Not all pleasures are of equal quality: some are of higher value and some are of lower value. • The pleasures that are of higher value should be given more weight in the calculation. • Higher pleasures: Those associated with the intellect, rationality, high-level cognitive functioning. = 3L of cheap wine 750ml of good wine Reasons why this theory is considered good? • Mill suggests a couple of reasons: – Intuitive appeal: good comes from real-world, material consequences and not, e.g., from mere conformity to rules or norms. If a rule or norm did not produce happiness and instead produced suffering, we would no longer find it acceptable. – Impartiality: each is to count as one, and only one. • Universality: Do not overlook anybody. • Equality: Do not give some individuals (including oneself!) more weight than others. Objections? • Deontological objection: Utilitarianism does not respect individual rights. • Example: “John Doe” is one of your regular patients, and he is in fine health. But he’s still a donor match for many other people. It seems like the utilitarian would still say you should kill him! Objections? • Virtue-ethical objection: There is more to a good life than sensations of happiness. Showing special care to a loved one, for example, might be part of living a full, flourishing life. • Example: “John Doe” is comatose, but he is your son. You are asked to make the decision regarding the removal of life support. If you hesitate before making a decision, the utilitarian would say you have shown partiality and so have done something wrong! Two Kinds of Utilitarianism (1) “Act Utilitarianism:” each and every individual action should in itself promote the maximal amount of good while decreasing harms. Two Kinds of Utilitarianism (1) “Act Utilitarianism:” each and every individual action should in itself promote the maximal amount of good while decreasing harms. But: “it would be unworthy of an intelligent agent not to be consciously aware that the action is of a class which, if practised generally, would be generally injurious, and that this is the ground of the obligation to abstain from it.” Two Kinds of Utilitarianism (1) “Act Utilitarianism:” each and every individual action should aim to directly promote good while decreasing harms. (2) “Rule Utilitarianism:” individual actions should conform to a set of rules that, if generally followed, will tend to produce the greatest good while minimizing harms. Further questions for critical assessment • Does rule utilitarianism resolve the problems associated with act utilitarianism? • Does rule utilitarianism introduce problems that act utilitarianism does not have? • Do utilitarian theories (either act or rule) have further problems not already addressed? • Do utilitarian theories (either act or rule) have further benefits not already addressed? From John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism CHAPTER II. WHAT UTILITARIANISM IS. ….The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure. To give a clear view of the moral standard set up by the theory, much more requires to be said; in particular, what things it includes in the ideas of pain and pleasure; and to what extent this is left an open question. But these supplementary explanations do not affect the theory of life on which this theory of morality is grounded—namely, that pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other scheme) are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain. Now, such a theory of life excites in many minds, and among them in some of the most estimable in feeling and purpose, inveterate dislike. To suppose that life has (as they express it) no higher end than pleasure—no better and nobler object of desire and pursuit—they designate as utterly mean and grovelling; as a doctrine worthy only of swine, to whom the followers of Epicurus were, at a very early period, contemptuously likened; and modern holders of the doctrine are occasionally made the subject of equally polite comparisons by its German, French, and English assailants. When thus attacked, the Epicureans have always answered, that it is not they, but their accusers, who represent human nature in a degrading light; since the accusation supposes human beings to be capable of no pleasures except those of which swine are capable. If this supposition were true, the charge could not be gainsaid, but would then be no longer an imputation; for if the sources of pleasure were precisely the same to human beings and to swine, the rule of life which is good enough for the one would be good enough for the other. The comparison of the Epicurean life to that of beasts is felt as degrading, precisely because a beast's pleasures do not satisfy a human being's conceptions of happiness. Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites, and when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which does not include their gratification. I do not, indeed, consider the Epicureans to have been by any means faultless in drawing out their scheme of consequences from the utilitarian principle. To do this in any sufficient manner, many Stoic, as well as Christian elements require to be included. But there is no known Epicurean theory of life which does not assign to the pleasures of the intellect; of the feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments, a much higher value as pleasures than to those of mere sensation. It must be admitted, however, that utilitarian writers in general have placed the superiority of mental over bodily pleasures chiefly in the greater permanency, safety, uncostliness, &c., of the former—that is, in their circumstantial advantages rather than in their intrinsic nature. And on all these points utilitarians have fully proved their case; but they might have taken the other, and, as it may be called, higher ground, with entire consistency. It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognise the fact, that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others. It would be absurd that while, in estimating all other things, quality is considered as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasures should be supposed to depend on quantity alone. If I am asked, what I mean by difference of quality in pleasures, or what makes one pleasure more valuable than another, merely as a pleasure, except its being greater in amount, there is but one possible answer. Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure. If one of the two is, by those who are competently acquainted with both, placed so far above the other that they prefer it, even though knowing it to be attended with a greater amount of discontent, and would not resign it for any quantity of the other pleasure which their nature is capable of, we are justified in ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a superiority in quality, so far outweighing quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small account. Now it is an unquestionable fact that those who are equally acquainted with, and equally capable of appreciating and enjoying, both, do give a most marked preference to the manner of existence which employs their higher faculties. Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals, for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs. They would not resign what they possess more than he, for the most complete satisfaction of all the desires which they have in common with him. If they ever fancy they would, it is only in cases of unhappiness so extreme, that to escape from it they would exchange their lot for almost any other, however undesirable in their own eyes. A being of higher faculties requires more to make him happy, is capable probably of more acute suffering, and is certainly accessible to it at more points, than one of an inferior type; but in spite of these liabilities, he can never really wish to sink into what he feels to be a lower grade of existence. We may give what explanation we please of this unwillingness; we may attribute it to pride, a name which is given indiscriminately to some of the most and to some of the least estimable feelings of which mankind are capable; we may refer it to the love of liberty and personal independence, an appeal to which was with the Stoics one of the most effective means for the inculcation of it; to the love of power, or to the love of excitement, both of which do really enter into and contribute to it: but its most appropriate appellation is a sense of dignity, which all human beings possess in one form or other, and in some, though by no means in exact, proportion to their higher faculties, and which is so essential a part of the happiness of those in whom it is strong, that nothing which conflicts with it could be, otherwise than momentarily, an object of desire to them. Whoever supposes that this preference takes place at a sacrifice of happiness-that the superior being, in anything like equal circumstances, is not happier than the inferior-confounds the two very different ideas, of happiness, and content. It is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low, has the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly-endowed being will always feel that any happiness which he can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect. But he can learn to bear its imperfections, if they are at all bearable; and they will not make him envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but only because he feels not at all the good which those imperfections qualify. It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides. It may be objected, that many who are capable of the higher pleasures, occasionally, under the influence of temptation, postpone them to the lower. But this is quite compatible with a full appreciation of the intrinsic superiority of the higher. Men often, from infirmity of character, make their election for the nearer good, though they know it to be the less valuable; and this no less when the choice is between two bodily pleasures, than when it is between bodily and mental. They pursue sensual indulgences to the injury of health, though perfectly aware that health is the greater good. It may be further objected, that many who begin with youthful enthusiasm for everything noble, as they advance in years sink into indolence and selfishness. But I do not believe that those who undergo this very common change, voluntarily choose the lower description of pleasures in preference to the higher. I believe that before they devote themselves exclusively to the one, they have already become incapable of the other. Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of young persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which their position in life has devoted them, and the society into which it has thrown them, are not favourable to keeping that higher capacity in exercise. Men lose their high aspirations as they lose their intellectual tastes, because they have not time or opportunity for indulging them; and they addict themselves to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer them, but because they are either the only ones to which they have access, or the only ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying. It may be questioned whether any one who has remained equally susceptible to both classes of pleasures, ever knowingly and calmly preferred the lower; though many, in all ages, have broken down in an ineffectual attempt to combine both. From this verdict of the only competent judges, I apprehend there can be no appeal. On a question which is the best worth having of two pleasures, or which of two modes of existence is the most grateful to the feelings, apart from its moral attributes and from its consequences, the judgment of those who are qualified by knowledge of both, or, if they differ, that of the majority among them, must be admitted as final. And there needs be the less hesitation to accept this judgment respecting the quality of pleasures, since there is no other tribunal to be referred to even on the question of quantity. What means are there of determining which is the acutest of two pains, or the intensest of two pleasurable sensations, except the general suffrage of those who are familiar with both? Neither pains nor pleasures are homogeneous, and pain is always heterogeneous with pleasure. What is there to decide whether a particular pleasure is worth purchasing at the cost of a particular pain, except the feelings and judgment of the experienced? When, therefore, those feelings and judgment declare the pleasures derived from the higher faculties to be preferable in kind, apart from the question of intensity, to those of which the animal nature, disjoined from the higher faculties, is susceptible, they are entitled on this subject to the same regard. I have dwelt on this point, as being a necessary part of a perfectly just conception of Utility or Happiness, considered as the directive rule of human conduct. But it is by no means an indispensable condition to the acceptance of the utilitarian standard; for that standard is not the agent's own greatest happiness, but the greatest amount of happiness altogether; and if it may possibly be doubted whether a noble character is always the happier for its nobleness, there can be no doubt that it makes other people happier, and that the world in general is immensely a gainer by it. Utilitarianism, therefore, could only attain its end by the general cultivation of nobleness of character, even if each individual were only benefited by the nobleness of others, and his own, so far as happiness is concerned, were a sheer deduction from the benefit. But the bare enunciation of such an absurdity as this last, renders refutation superfluous. According to the Greatest Happiness Principle, as above explained, the ultimate end, with reference to and for the sake of which all other things are desirable (whether we are considering our own good or that of other people), is an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments, both in point of quantity and quality; the test of quality, and the rule for measuring it against quantity, being the preference felt by those who, in their opportunities of experience, to which must be added their habits of self-consciousness and selfobservation, are best furnished with the means of comparison. This, being, according to the utilitarian opinion, the end of human action, is necessarily also the standard of morality; which may accordingly be defined, the rules and precepts for human conduct, by the observance of which an existence such as has been described might be, to the greatest extent possible, secured to all mankind; and not to them only, but, so far as the nature of things admits, to the whole sentient creation…. I must again repeat, what the assailants of utilitarianism seldom have the justice to acknowledge, that the happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct, is not the agent's own happiness, but that of all concerned. As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator. In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbour as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality. As the means of making the nearest approach to this ideal, utility would enjoin, first, that laws and social arrangements should place the happiness, or (as speaking practically it may be called) the interest, of every individual, as nearly as possible in harmony with the interest of the whole; and secondly, that education and opinion, which have so vast a power over human character, should so use that power as to establish in the mind of every ... Purchase answer to see full attachment