Utilitarianism | Ethics Defined

© 2017 The University of Texas at Austin. All Rights Reserved.

[kirtivardhanjaitawat]

one of the best content i found on net

[jan-bean]

Notes; determines right from wrong by focusing on outcomes
Ethical choice produces greatest good for greater number
Can justify war
Most common approach to moral reasoning in business
We can't predict the future so irs hard to know if our consequences are GOOD or bad
Also can't account for justice and individual rights

[quantumfineartsandfossils]

oh my god the one healthy person ripped to shreds for the four & the point blank no you dont do that was extremely validating

[Contribute_TakeCare_Learn_Play]

The only reason the hospital argument seemingly points out a flaw on utilitarianism is because the hospital argument itself is flawed and incomplete.


If utilitarianism is about getting the most happiness in total while avoiding suffering as much as possible. Then if you take into account the absolute dread people all over the world would constantly live with if we harvested organs as easy as that. Then the suffering created by that far outweighs the happiness that is created. So in other words if you take into consideration as much of the potential effects of this cause that you'd consider, you'd see that according to utilitarianism the organs shouldn't be harvested.

[Kahandran]

LMFAO
I've just watched 30 mins of comedy sketches and not chuckled once, but imagining a "healthy person" walking into the hospital and all the nurses sharing evil looks got me rolling

[rafterssynergy]

Narration in the video: "It is the only moral framework that can be used to justify military force, or war." This is absurdly false. People have used all kinds of moral frameworks to justify military force or war, for example, religious moral frameworks and contractualist moral frameworks, or for that matter egoistic moral frameworks. Perhaps the speaker means that utilitarianism is the only moral framework that can *successfully* justify military force or war. But that is a huge opinion, and it needs to be proven.

[JohnThomas]

*This video goes badly wrong in suggesting that “utilitarianism has obvious limitations”. Instead, it should state that “utilitarianism has some counterintuitive consequences”.* Quantum theory is counter-intuitive too, but that doesn’t mean it is unreliable. Human intuitions are notoriously unreliable and there’s no reason to believe that our moral intuitions are any different. They were naturally selected because they aided our survival. We should not assume that survival-tracking intuitions are also truth-tracking.

The fact that utilitarianism involves predicting the future consequences of actions isn’t a limitation. We make prudential decisions based on our assessment of the likely future consequences of our actions every day. Sometimes we get things right, sometimes we don’t. That’s life! Just because we’d like a theory to be able to determine right from wrong with 100% reliability doesn’t mean that such a theory exists. Wishing something to be so doesn’t make it so.

To suggest that utilitarianism has a problem accounting for values such as ‘rights’ or ‘justice’ is a little misleading. For utilitarianism, ‘rights’ and ‘justice’ derive their value from their usefulness in promoting better consequences. People who are treated ‘justly’ and have their ‘rights’ respected tend to be happier than those who are treated ‘unjustly’ and have their ‘rights’ disrespected. This means that utilitarians can account for concepts like ‘rights’ and ‘justice’, it’s just that these have instrumental value, not value in and of themselves. They serve the purpose of promoting the foundational value of supporting greater overall happiness.

The fact that many people’s intuitions tell them that the transplant scenario is immoral may be so much the worse for their moral intuitions. Our intuitions aren’t built to handle weird philosophical thought experiments about improbable situations that were not part of our evolutionary history. If transplants were safe and reliable, then it would be in our own best interests to agree to participate in a population-wide transplant lottery because that would increase our own chances of survival. A utilitarian would argue that the transplant scenario is justified only in a lottery style situation because of the unhappiness that would be caused by arbitrarily picking up people visiting hospitals. If that happened people would lose faith in the medical system and medical professionals in a way that would not happen if people agreed to be part of an impartial lottery that improved the chances of survival for themselves and their loved ones.

For a more thorough exploration of these questions I highly recommend Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer’s most recent book.

[dmcdivitt]

The assertion "It is the most common approach to moral reasoning used in business because of the way in which it accounts for costs and benefits" makes no sense. Business uses law and applicable standards as a basis for morality, and often business places morality second to other concerns such as profit. Why do you think people criticize business practices?

[johnellis]

Talking about humans as we would about improving the breading of a herd of cattle, what has this to do with improving the morality of society? A better way:
"No one shall enrich themselves upon the misery of another." And so, the more intelligent upper-half of society must stop hoarding all the land, wealth and political power.

[constancelumiere]

God Bless and Definitely loves you all. You'll never regret living for him.

[CounterFlow]

Umm I do not see how businesses use utilitarianism in any stretch of the imagination. Most for-profit corporations are not here to make the world a better place, they are there to generate profit for it's owners.

[operatic]

Terrible counterarguments.

"can't predict the future so don't determine if actions are good or bad" - This is a flaw of literally every moral framework. Deontology doesn't escape this by not being consequentialist because at the end of the day, the end results of applying a universal rule can't be predicted either and while the results are irrelevant in deontology, they are not irrelevant to the actual experience of real human beings who will be affected by decisions made under this framework.

"4 patients scenario" - There are numerous problems with this. First, extremely preposterous scenario that would never happen in real life as the constraints the situation demands are impossible to implement. There would never just be that one option open to the surgeon, any reasonable surgeon who even has an awareness of the Hippocratic Oath would at least give the "victim" a choice and would let the 4 patients know about what would take place. If the victim agrees, consent has been given so while the decision will impact the victim's friends and family, it will be understood to be their decision so will greatly lessen the negative utility involved as well as make the sacrifice more palatable to the 4 patients. But let's assume consent isn't requested and the surgeon does just make the decision himself. If the argument is that greater outrage would follow from killing the victim to save the 4 patients then this is admitting there's greater negative utility in this option not accounted for by whoever proposed the scenario and therefore this is the less moral option. This unaccounted for negative utility will come from the reaction of the 4 patients and public on learning the truth.

[SlingSlangsChannel]

why are they all smiling where there is a dead person on the floor? 1:22

[jalwaali-]

concept get clear but the example does'nt look more suitable for this approach because one person can't donate 4 organs to 4 person it also has several limitations and costs in medical context. you shuold explain the example in business context or any other social context such as unethical business practices of any organization. thank you ! i appreciate your understanding for my feedback

[VideoEssayWatcher]

Infringing on personal rights is seen as acceptable if the person is a danger to others so saying this is a flaw if utilitarianism is pretty disingenuous.

[geoannealyzandralaoestrada]

Is utilitarianism contrary to rights? If so would act and rule utilitarianism be contrary to rights as well? If it's not contrary to rights, would you say it respects rights?

[gothmajesty]

Hello, what is the font used in this video?

[Preacher_.]

The man wandering into the hospital would have his happiness and liberty (and thus his organs) protected under Utilitarianism due to The Harm Principal...

Now swap that "healthy wandering man" out for another, who through a fatal incident has recently died and is an organ donor. Now you have actual Utilitarianism.

There's also a scenario where no one passes away and no "unused organs" are available for transplant... In that case those needing transplants would inevitably die, and under utilitarianism their final days would be met with palliative care that reduced their pain and suffering as much as possible, and that would be that...

Under utilitarianism you would never forcibly harvest the organs of a person who's currently using those organs because of the pain and suffering it would cause that person... That's the entier bases of The Harm Principal.

[Student-gilb]

Utilitarianism seems the hardest when it comes to ethics.

[felixftw]

i thought utilitarian was just the opposite of minimalism; instead of one button to handle everything (so to speak), everything has its' own settings to configure to your heart's desire
also, that example is stupid; there's such a thing as organ donors