MEDISCOPE | ISSUE 2 | 02 DECEMBER 2020

Utilitarianism is a consequentialist ethical theory that
advocates only for actions that produce the most
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happiness and least amount of suffering possible.
Peter Vardy’s book ‘The Puzzle of Ethics’ says that the
theory can be best summed up by the phrase: “the
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greatest happiness for the greatest number.” The
choice or action that produces the most happiness is
the right done. For example, the UK government’s
decision to enforce a lockdown near to the end of
March was influenced by data modelling produced by
Imperial College London which suggested that a
lockdown would suppress the virus and mitigate
deaths thus aiming to prolong the greatest amount of
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human life and happiness possible.
Australian philosopher Peter Singer said in 2017 that
utilitarianism “often does give us the right answers”
despite it sometimes clashing with our “moral
intuitions”. Many people would argue that
utilitarianism is the “default setting” to ethical
reasoning and this is clearly shown with the trolley
problem. Imagine you are standing near some tram
tracks. You can see a trolley rapidly going down the
tracks towards five helpless workers who will
inevitably be crushed. You see a lever connected to the
tracks and realise that if you pull it, the tram will be
diverted onto another set of tracks away from the five
workers. However, on these second set of tacks, is one
worker. Would you pull the lever to kill one life but save
five? Some people would arguing that less people
would be killed whereas others would not arguing that
they did not play an active role in killing anyone which
highlights the clashes this theory can have with our
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intuitions.
British philosopher Jeremy Bentham published a long
defence of utilitarianism and was ahead of his time
because he was an early defender of women and
animal rights. John Stuart Mill was another British
philosopher who was an early defender of
utilitarianism and animal rights who succeeded
Bentham. Utilitarianism is made up of value theory and
the theory of right action. Furthermore, there are two
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versions of utilitarianism: act and rule utilitarianism.
The former states that utilitarian methods should first
arrive at specific actions which are either moral or
immoral and the general rules can be concluded. The
latter says that utilitarianism should first frame
general principles or rules and these rules can then
derive specific acts that are not allowed.
Utilitarianism is one of the most reason-based
approaches that enables people to determine right
from wrong as well as help them produce the greatest
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good and least amount of suffering with their actions.
It is, to some extent, a valuable ethical theory because
UTILITARIANISM
By Oluchi Ijeh 12S
it allows us to primarily focus on happiness in society
and our lives. It is an easy ethical theory that we can
carry out in our lives because it only requires us to
focus on the tasks and actions that give us the greatest
happiness and this can help us make the best decisions
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for ourselves. Furthermore, utilitarianism emphasises
a need for neutrality where you must consider
everyone and everything equally and try to have a
neutral perspective. For example, if you had to decide
whether or not to release your government approved
pharmaceutical drug with side effects but a potential
to heal many people, you would choose to release the
drug on the basis that it will be the best decision for
everyone that is involved. On the contrary,
utilitarianism is flawed because everyone has their
own definition of what makes them happy since no one
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is the same. Whilst skateboarding may be seen as
more enjoyable than reading for some, the exact
opposite can also be true for others showing how not
all utilitarian decisions will make everyone happy. It is
not always easy to come to arrive at the right decisions
because you cannot always seamlessly predict the
consequences of your actions and then determine
which action you will carry out.
There are also always scenarios in life where people
are in high pressure situations and are therefore urged
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to make difficult decisions in a matter of seconds. For
example, after spending hours considering all the
patients, it would be less daunting for a doctor to
decide which critical patient they would try to save. But
if we reverse the scenario in such a way that the doctor
is in a chaotic paediatric ward filled with infantile
screams and hardly any time, the doctor may not come
to the same decision about which patient they would
try to save. When it comes to the idea of neutrality,
utilitarianism diminishes the value of the close
relationships that we many have with certain people
and in some circumstances, utilitarianism would
require us to disregard our loved ones such as taking
the utilitarian approach and deciding to save 5 lives at
the expense of your own son or daughter dying.
To conclude, even though it is very difficult to
implement into every aspect of daily life, utilitarianism
can be a somewhat valuable ethical theory in the sense
that it promotes egalitarianism so that the happiness
or pain of one person is equal to the happiness or pain
of another person. It is also universal which means that
it can be applied in any situation with the unwavering
aim of maximising happiness and minimising pain.
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ETHICS - UTILITARIANISM