1. CONSEQUENTIALISM

2. TROLLEY A runaway trolley is coming down the track
TROLLEY A runaway trolley is coming down the track. It is headed towards five people who cannot get out of its way. The driver of the trolley realizes that he can save the five by throwing a switch and diverting the trolley down a siding, but he also realizes that if he does so the trolley will kill a lone an standing on the siding. Should the driver divert the trolley?

3. A runaway trolley is coming down the track
A runaway trolley is coming down the track. It is headed towards five people who cannot get out of its way. A passerby realizes that if he pushes a nearby overweight man onto the tracks his bulk will stop the trolley before it hits the five, though the overweight man himself will be killed.

4. You are a doctor and 5 people who were injured in a trolley accident come into your emergency room. You quickly realize that you can tend to 4/5 injured people in order to save their lives but it will take you all day to do this because you are the only doctor in the emergency room. The last fellow is so severely injured that in order to save his life you must spend all day on him as well. You only have enough time to save 4 or 1. What decision will you make?

5. You are a transplant doctor who just received 5 patients in need of transplants. Each needs a different organ. You just remembered that in the other room a man walked in for a routine check up and he unfortunately feel asleep. If these 5 patients don’t receive a transplant today, they will die. Do you use the sleeping man’s organs?

6. CONSEQUENTIALISM
We don’t always have to focus on actions. We can also focus on consequences.
Consequentialism is based on the premise that our ethical choices, like other types of decisions, should be based on their consequences. In consequentialism, the consequences of actions are measured against one value. This ‘useful’ value can be something like happiness, welfare or pleasure. It should be maximized. So if the consequences are good, the act is right. If the consequences are bad, the act is wrong.

7. Utilitarianism vs. Egoism
An obvious question however arises when evaluating the consequences of an action.
If you evaluate the consequences just for yourself your judgement will be different than if you evaluate the consequences for some other individual. Take the example of you hitting a Porsche in the middle of the night when no one is around to witness it.
The answers to these questions form the bases for two theories:
Utilitarianism
Egoism

8. Egoism
This is a consequentialist theory that contends that we act morally when we act in a way that promotes our own best long-term interests. Therefore when deciding the morality of an action, we should only consider the consequences for ourselves.

9. Utilitarianism
The name of utilitarianism is derived from the Latin ‘utilis’, meaning ‘useful’. This second type of consequentialism is utilitarianism, founded by English philosophers Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. They argued that the best decisions
(1) generate the most benefits as compared to their disadvantages,
(2) benefit the largest number of people.

10. In other words, Utilitarianism is attempting to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

11. Ratio of Harm to Evil
An action is morally right if it results in pleasure, whereas it is wrong if it gives rise to pain. The freedom principle is also based on this. This principle states that you can do whatever you want, as long as you don’t cause anyone any pain/harm.
Utilitarians are more concerned about the ratio of harm to evil than the absolute amount of happiness or unhappiness produced by a choice.
In other words, a decision that produces a great amount of good but an equal amount of harm would be rejected in favour of an alternative that produces a moderate amount of good at very little cost.

12. Short and Long Term Consequences
Utilitarians consider both short- and long-term consequences when making ethical determinations. If the immediate benefits of a decision doesn’t outweigh its possible future costs, then the decision that produces long term benefits is chosen.
However, if the immediate good is sure and the future good uncertain, decision makers generally select the option that produces the short-term benefit

13. Further, the Utilitarian decision maker keeps her or his own interests in mind but gives them no more weight than anyone else’s.
Making a choice according to Utilitarian principles is a three-step process.
First, identify all the possible courses of action.
Second, estimate the direct as well as indirect pain (costs) and pleasure (benefits) for each course of action.
Finally, select the alternative that produces the greatest amount of good based on the pleasure-pain ratios generated in step two.

14. How to calculate the pleasure/pain ratio
Bentham attempted to calculate the pleasure-ratio by basing it on several criteria:
Intensity of the pleasure
How long it lasts
How certain it is to occur
How likely it is to produce additional pleasure
Quality (added by Mill and it refers to the moral superiority that one pleasure holds over another)

16. CRITISIMS
Utilitarianism is probably the most defensible approach in emergency situations, such as in the wake of the massive earthquake that hit Pakistan in In the midst of such widespread devastation, medical personnel ought to give top priority to those who are most likely to survive. It does little good to spend time with a terminal patient while a person who would benefit from treatment dies.
Few could argue with the ultimate goal of evaluating consequences, which is to promote human welfare by maximizing benefits to as many people as possible. Despite its popularity, Utilitarianism suffers from serious deficiencies.

17. Of course it is very hard to determine how much pleasure an action will actually give. Also, to find the total amount of pleasure, we need to consider all individuals that are involved and add up their pleasures. But how do we quantify pleasure? And has the pleasure of one person the same value as the pleasure of another? Also, how do we decide whether one action gives more pleasure than another? Answering these questions is difficult. Even the clever John Stuart Mill did not have an answer, although he did have an opinion. He stated that certain pleasures (like intellectual fulfillment) are by nature more valuable than other pleasures (like physical desires).

18. Sometimes identifying possible consequences can be difficult or impossible. Many different groups may be affected, unforeseen consequences may develop, and so on. Even when consequences are clear, evaluating their relative merits can be challenging. Being objective is difficult because we humans tend to downplay long-term risks in favour of immediate rewards and to favour ourselves when making decisions. Due to the difficulty of identifying and evaluating potential costs and benefits, Utilitarian decision makers sometimes reach different conclusions when faced with the same dilemma.

19. Ironically, one of the greatest strengths of Utilitarian theory—its concern for collective human welfare—is also one of its greatest weaknesses. In focusing on what’s best for the group as a whole, Utilitarianism discounts the worth of the individual. The needs of the person are subjugated to the needs of the group or organization. This type of reasoning can justify all kinds of abuse. In utilitarianism, an engineer could also be asked to bend or break a fundamental rule, because this will result in the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. For example, the engineer has the opportunity to save 10 million euros on a design. But he knows that this will later cause an accident killing 5 people. He argues that 10 million euros can cause more happiness than 5 lives. To compensate for this, rule utilitarianism has been created. This kind of utilitarianism recognizes and uses moral rules. It is thus also similar to duty ethics.

20. View the following clip, entitled “Justice with Michael Sandell” a Harvard Professor.
Episode 2. Time 3:35.
This episode examines the use of cost-benefit analysis (a utilitarian approach) by businesses to determine where they should allocate funds, minimize costs and maximize profits.
After watching the clip what would you say about putting a price tag on human life?