Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is one of the most popular ethical theories that can be applied to the Trolley Problem. Utilitarianism holds that the right action is the one that maximizes overall happiness or pleasure while minimizing overall pain or suffering. In the context of the Trolley Problem, the utilitarian would argue that the right action is the one that saves the greatest number of lives. In other words, if you can save five lives by sacrificing one, you should do so because that would produce the greatest net increase in overall happiness.

Criticisms of Utilitarianism

However, utilitarianism has been criticized for several reasons.

• One criticism is that it doesn't take individual rights and justice into account. For example, if you had to sacrifice one person to save five, that would violate the rights of the one person.
• Another criticism is that it ignores the distribution of happiness. For example, if you sacrifice one person to save five, the five people may not be five times happier than the one person is unhappy.

Rule Utilitarianism

One way to address these criticisms is to adopt a rule utilitarian approach. Rule utilitarianism holds that the right action is the one that conforms to a rule that, if generally followed, would produce the greatest overall happiness. In the context of the Trolley Problem, the rule utilitarian would argue that the right action is the one that conforms to a rule that, if generally followed, would save the greatest number of lives. This approach takes into account individual rights and justice because the rule would respect those rights and promote justice. It also takes into account the distribution of happiness because the rule would be designed to maximize overall happiness, not just the happiness of a few individuals.

Criticisms of Rule Utilitarianism

However, rule utilitarianism has also been criticized on the grounds that it can be difficult to determine which rule would produce the greatest overall happiness, and that it can be difficult to apply rules to specific cases in practice. Despite these criticisms, many philosophers find utilitarianism to be a compelling ethical theory that can be applied to the Trolley Problem and other moral dilemmas.

All courses were automatically generated using OpenAI's GPT-3. Your feedback helps us improve as we cannot manually review every course. Thank you!