ETHICAL DILEMMAS AND UTILITARIANISM

-- By CarlForbes - 14 Feb 2008

Utilitarianism focuses on the aggregate happiness or pleasure of a population. The theory considers the moral worth of an action in relation to the action’s contribution to the aggregate happiness or pleasure of a population. Utilitarians are comfortable with harm being done to an individual if it promotes the overall welfare of a group of people. The idea is good in theory because it aims to maximize society’s happiness and well-being. However, it is not good in practice because utilitarianism is not as forward looking as one would think. Utilitarianism is almost contradictory in that immediate consequences are overlooked for the distant while the happiness or suffering of distant populations is overlooked for the same regarding immediate populations.

“The Blackstone Ratio” – 10:1

William Blackstone said it is “better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.” The ratio that Blackstone established is in great dispute. Some people put the ratio at one guilty to one innocent, some put it at one hundred guilty to one innocent, and some even go as far as one thousand guilty to one innocent. No matter what the ratio, the idea is that it is better to let a guilty person go free than to convict someone of a crime that he or she did not commit. Focusing on American society, we seem to care tremendously about liberty that we cannot fathom situations where it would be okay to convict an innocent man. The issue seems to be that we do not want to give the government too much power to restrict one’s freedom. Therefore, we establish higher burdens of proof in criminal cases because a lower burden of proof, such as preponderance-of-the-evidence, would lead to a higher rate of conviction of innocent people.

Utilitarianism seems to look forward at ways to benefit society. Regarding crimes, utilitarians search for ways to keep an offender from committing the crime again as well as ways to dissuade other potential offenders from actually committing the crime. Is acquitting ten criminals as opposed to convicting one innocent man a correct form of deterrence? Allowing ten criminals the opportunity to go free for previous indiscretions does not seem like a way to keep an offender from committing the crime again. It does not even seem like an intelligent attempt at deterring potential offenders from committing crime. What is seems to do is highly value autonomy over aggregate social welfare. This cannot make sense because out of ten non-convicted criminals, one is likely to commit another crime.

According to some studies, the re-arrest rate for formerly incarcerated criminals is about 67%. I am not clear as to what the recidivism rate is for non-convicted criminals, but it has to be higher than the rate for those convicted. Therefore, it is unclear as to why it would be better to acquit ten guilty men than it would be to convict one innocent man. Convicting the innocent man (whom society may not have to know is actually innocent) could serve deterrence purposes. The ten guilty men would be convicted or would not be released from prison (as some hypothetical situations present it) and potential criminals would have a deterring example. Additionally, society would be happier, which utilitarians want, because potential re-offenders would not be back on the streets.

“The Trolley Problem”

In this situation, a train with no brakes is barreling down a track. Five people are tied to the track. You are standing next to a lever, which if pulled will divert the train to another track. However, one person is tied to the second track. Should you pull the lever? Utilitarianism would say that you should. Additionally, utilitarians would say that pulling the lever would be the morally better thing to do than doing nothing at all. Essentially, the argument for saving the five people at the expense of the one is that it will maximize the greatest good for the greatest number of people. However, this does not make sense considering that utilitarians do not care how the “good” is distributed as long as the greatest amount of good possible exists for society.

How do we know what is going to maximize the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people? In the trolley problem, how do we know that the one person killed in order to save the five is not going to contribute tremendously to society? That one person whose life the person at the lever may decide to sacrifice to save the five may have been a medical scientist working on a cure to a deadly disease. Clearly, the person at the lever would not have time to find out each person’s life story, but that is the problem with utilitarianism and ethical dilemmas. Utilitarianism does not take individual characteristics into account. The theory does not consider what people can contribute to society at a later time. In the dilemma, the utilitarian only sees the net gain of four lives. The theory does not see that the five people tied to the first track could be serial killers. Would the utilitarian decide to let the five die in this case? How would the situation change if the five people on the first track were average human beings while the person on the second track was your mother?

Utilitarianism may or may not have an answer to these twists in the problem that it provides a simple answer to, but the twists show that theories are just that. When placed into real life situations, people do not think based on theories. People’s actions are determined by social interactions and by the consequences that they may face. Freeing ten criminals to save one innocent man may lead to societal chaos while saving five men on a track may lead to the death of a great scientist. The point is that you do not know what you would do until placed in an actual ethical dilemma.

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