What is the difference between having a moment of happiness that only lasts for a week or two after an appointment with his surgeon, and the years of happiness that a family member brings to us? If we decide by how other’s will receive the news that a child died because a surgeon was to be saved, what happiness will be greatest? It all aims to saving the child, but it never devalues the surgeon to just another number in a death toll. Keeping these results in mind, a utilitarian would send you to rescue the child. This is so, because the child will bring the greatest amount of happiness to yourself, and also the greatest happiness of others. The greatest amount of happiness can be divided by your half and the general majority’s half.
To better contrast and help understand the problems with utilitarianism, Kantian ethics will be put to test with the problem. We give a Kantian the same problem and ask who he would attend to rescue, he answers that any of the two can be saved. He then aims to the surgeon (just to offer an example here), and says that the death of the other was inevitable. His duty as a chief firefighter was completed by simply ordering his crew to save at least one of both. He never used one as a means to save the other one; or the other to have a reason for the death of the first. Unlike utilitarian views, Kantian views offer a correct list of options every time. As long as our responsibilities are met at the end of the day, and we can validate that these worked as they should’ve, our job as Kantians will be fulfilled.
Consequentialism and utilitarianism cross paths often. One could say it inspired utilitarianism, because utilitarian views are aimed towards receiving anything that gives the most amount of happiness without taking in consideration the means of getting there. Obviously when using the Hedonic Calculus our decisions are “mostly validated”, but it’s never that far from consequentialist views. Our decisions are validated by the amount of happiness and therefore can’t be wrong if they reach the utilitarian view’s goals.
The number one problem with consequentialist theories is that they will find any validation to conclude with their own needs. We are left to debate what is moral and what is not. The thing is, there is no universal doctrine to what is right. We never have a true defined concept of the things considered wrong. The end never justifies the means, because others shouldn’t be affected in order to please a vast majority or to gain anything out of it. A happy medium of this could be if everybody works together for a similar goal. Never devaluing one or many because the ends will end up offering an overall attribute of joy. It might sound like my position has shifted to that of Kantian influences, but it’s a sentiment that emerges when justifications come over the need of good arguments that were clearly scoured through to prove the point that, in the prior case, letting a person lose their life to save another’s was right.
We can never really be true Utilitarians or Kantians because our feelings will always b
