101 Philosophy Essay 2
5/5/2006
The state of affairs below is going to be the basis of the arguments to follow: In a certain situation there is a convicted murder, M, who is serving a life sentence in prison. This murder is guarded by a person, G. At a point during Ms sentence, G is contacted by a hostage-taker, H, who has a demand. It is at this instant that G is placed in a very difficult situation. He is given the option of killing prisoner M, or allowing H to kill the ten hostages under his/her control. Under these circumstances G chose to kill M and in turn, saved the lives of the ten hostages.
In essence, the premise of utilitarian thought is the sum of individual actions, needs, or preferences, is the actions, needs, or preferences of the population as a whole. So, it is usually the case that an individual wants to go forth with something that will be a positive influence on the society they belong to. In its simplest form, utilitarianism says that one should act in accordance with what will be the best outcome in the short term, although long run effects definitely come into play at a deeper level. This is directly connected to the consequentialist ethical
theory, which basically states that one should do whatever will have the best consequences or outcomes. In most cases the one involved in the situation will look into the very immediate future in order to determine what action will produce the best and most positive
consequence. This decision, however, may in many cases differ from a
decision
that
would
be
made
based
upon
a
deeper
analysis
and
evaluation of long term effects. For instance, say one decides that since his/her friends
upcoming birthday warrants a surprise party. One goes forth with the plans, and arranges for a bunch of family members and close friends to be waiting in the dark for the unsuspecting friend to arrive from a day at the office. Unfortunately, it is unknown to the organizer of this surprise, that the friend has recently developed high blood
pressure and some potentially clogged arteries. So this unaware friend enters his/her home and is utterly shocked and frightened by the
immediate sound and sight of his/her loved ones. This unpredicted stress causes the now over aware friend to have a coronary and pass out. The expected short term outcome of this surprise was supposed to be a good and exciting day for the friend who has earned another year. Instead, his/her next few weeks will be spent in the hospital and following the stay, the friend will develop and paranoid and over cautious outlook on life, and never fully enjoy another day. Superficially the given situation presents a simple decision. G must make a decision that will lead to the best projected outcome. So it seems to be a matter of basic math. Save the life of one person, M, and indirectly end ten lives, or kill one person, M, and indirectly save ten lives. The obvious choice would be to kill the one person and save the other ten. From this perspective G would be taking action viewed as right under the scrutiny of utilitarians.
Now, upon closer examination of the situation, there are many more elusive issues involved in the decision. Deeper under the surface a myriad of different aspects of morality come into play. From one perspective, the guard, G, would not want to get his/her hand dirty to any Some extent. believe that taking the life of another human being or any creation is merely wrong. Regardless of any possible
extenuating circumstances that could arise, murder is wrong on the most basic of levels. In effect, no person should commit such an act, despite the consequences of such restraint. Furthermore, it is believed that once a person gets his/her hand dirty, even if previously completely good and innocent, he/she becomes evil, at least to some extent. From this point, a type of slippery slope comes into play, and unfortunately more evil may result. So in this instance, refraining from murdering prisoner M may prevent
further evil from occurring in the future. Once the long term is taken into consideration, it becomes clear to some that the conversion of guard G to evil may be even more detrimental to society in the future. Making a good being commit an evil act can be seen as an even greater evil than permitting hostage-taker H to kill the people in his/her possession. Another potential uncalculated and unconsidered outcome of the guards decision the kill the prisoner M would be the mal effects on the prisoner M and his/her family. First of all, the prisoner could have been wrongfully accused and sentenced. He/she could have been framed from the start of the sequence of events that led to his/her current state of imprisonment. If this was the case, then the murderer
is not a murderer at all, but an innocent person imprisoned for the actions of somebody else. If this were the case, killing the prisoner M would be a wrong act to an even further extent, beyond the mere fact that the action is murder. It would be the murder of an innocent person. In addition, regardless of whether or not M was wrongfully in jail, his/her family has potentially no connection to the crime and a maintained love that only family members can have for one another. If this were true, then the murder of M by his/her guard G would cause emotional harm to Ms family. This pain would be unwarranted and would result in a negative impact on the community as a whole. In this case, abstaining from the situation would be the choice made by guard G. Law enforcement officials could potentially be made aware of the problem and attempt to deal with it, possibly resulting in the maintained lives of eleven people, instead of ten. With an outcome such as this, the guard G does not have to commit murder, ten innocent lives are still saved, and hostage-taker H is still stopped. Unfortunately, unrealistic. Through utilitarianism it is understood that evil must occur in this world. Once people can get beyond this fact, it is then simply a matter of choosing the course of action resulting in the most good, both presently, and in the long run. This can be achieved by means of the weighing of all feasible options and all realistic outcomes, or at least those that are apparent at the time. Keeping this in mind, and in light of the aforementioned, the utilitarian does say that the this specific solution is extremely ideal, and
guard Gs action of killing prisoner M is right. However, it also becomes clear that utilitarian belief is more basic, and does not evaluate the moral implications of actions. This being said, the
situation may have to be reevaluated, bearing in mind all possible positive and negative effects of the set proceedings.