Chapter 8: Utilitarianism (2)
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What is the purpose of the Trolley Problem?
To reveal tension between duty-based ethics and outcome-based ethics and to test whether killing and letting die are morally different.
Who designed the Trolley Problem and why ?
• She wanted to test the idea that killing and letting die are morally different. • She also wanted to question whether morality should be based on kantian or utiltarian ethics.
What is the Switch Case?
A scenario where a trolley will kill five people unless you pull a lever that redirects it onto a track where one person will die.
How would a utilitarian judge the Switch Case?
Pull the switch, because reducing total deaths increases overall wellbeing.
How would a Kantian judge the Switch Case?
Do not pull the switch, because pulling directly makes you responsible for killing one person.
Why do people generally accept pulling the switch?
The killing feels indirect, and the one person’s death seems like a side effect rather than a deliberate action.
What is the Fat Man Case (Footbridge Case)?
A scenario where pushing a large man off a bridge will stop a trolley and save five people.
How would a utilitarian and kantian judge the Fat Man Case?
Push the man, because the overall consequences are the same as in the switch case: five saved, one lost.
Why do people hesitate in the Fat Man Case?
The killing is direct and intentional, and it feels wrong to use someone’s body as a tool.
Why is the Trolley Problem important to ethics?
It exposes contradictions in our moral intuitions, highlights tension between duty and consequences, and tests the doctrine of double effect.
What is the doctrine of double effect?
The idea that harming someone as a side effect may be allowed, but harming someone as a means to an end is not.
Why do trolley problems expose a weakness in utilitarianism?
Because utilitarianism can justify harming innocent people if it increases total happiness.
How does utilitarianism struggle with moral rules like ‘do not kill’?
It treats rules as optional and follows them only when they increase happiness.
Why does utilitarianism demand impossible levels of knowledge?
It requires accurate predictions of consequences, ripple effects, and long-term outcomes.
How does utilitarianism reduce moral relationships to calculations?
It treats promises, commitments, and dignity as numbers in a pleasure–pain equation.
How does utilitarianism fail to value individuals?
It focuses on total happiness, so one life can be sacrificed if the group benefits.
What is the main idea of Situation Ethics?
Situation ethics was the idea that the greatest good should be determined not by some universal moral principle but by the amount of goodness produced with reference to the specific circumstances and a motive of love.
What is the single absolute principle in Situation Ethics?
Agape, selfless unconditional love.
What is the agapic calculus?
A judgment of what action produces the most selfless love.
What is proportionalism?
A Catholic-influenced theory that weighs good and bad effects to choose the proportionally better outcome.
When might proportionalists justify a normally wrong act?
When the act prevents a greater harm, such as torturing a terrorist to save lives.
Why does the Catholic Church reject proportionalism?
Because some acts are intrinsically evil and cannot be justified by outcomes.
Who has argued that all forms of utilitarianism are problematic because they fail to take account of morally relevant relationships? What was his thought experiment?
Bernard Williams . The jim problem
What three scriptural themes relate to utilitarian concerns in Christian teaching?
(1) Actions are goal-directed and linked to consequences, (2) Jesus’ teaching on “blessedness” (happiness) in the Beatitudes, (3) Concern for the well-being of all people.