![]() “ Act only on that maxim through which you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.” (Smith, 2013) He says this most famously in chapter two of his work, Groundwork of Metaphysics of Morals. Not only this, but that the ethical decision must apply to both specific situations, and also universally to all situations. His argument is that an ethical decision must remain “good”, regardless of the eventual empirical consequences. What if Jim chose to kill one protester in the hope of saving 19 other lives, but the captain failed to honor his word, and proceeded to kill the remaining 19 as well as Jim? Even if Jim refused the captains offer, and he killed all 20 before executing Jim too, at least the last moral choice Jim made was not one that resulted in him actively ending the life of an innocent stranger. The projection of a probably future was, for Kant, not enough to base a moral groundwork on. He means that by justifying the means with the ends, the protagonist is leaving their decision up to what might happen, or what they suspect is the most likely consequence of their action, which is by no means a certain thing. Kant based his theory on the thought that ethics was too serious a subject to be left up to probability or chance. To sum his argument more simply: “ don’t do bad to produce good”. In contrast to this, we see Kant favoring motive rather than outcome in order to establish what is the most moral route through an ethical quagmire. As, surely, the totality of happiness after the action is more important than the action itself? But more specifically, Bentham argues that any moral question can be answered by establishing what will generate the most pleasure (good) and conversely, the least pain (bad). ![]() ![]() So for Jim, the act of killing one protester would be seen as justifiable as the result is the saving of 19 lives. Or basically, that if the outcome of an action is perceived to be more beneficial than failing to perform the action, then the action used to achieve this outcome is justified. This framework can be summed simply in the more commonly used phrasing: “ the ends justifies the means”. The first option open to Jim would be to agree with Pedro, the sweat stained military captain, and shoot one of the protesters in order to save the other 19, thus favoring Bentham’s moral framework. Does Bentham’s deontology convince us with his Utilitarian ideology of acting in reference to a Hedonistic Calculus, or is Immanuel Kant more persuasive with his teleological notion of acting via a Categorical Imperative? Upon reading the dilemma outlined by Williams and Smart, there seem to be two potential courses of action that Jim is able to take, which can be separated into the dominant epistemologies that they fall into that is, to accept, or not to accept the offer of the captain. Several options are open to us, however correctly making the decision that leads to the least moral ambiguity seems almost impossible due to the potential gravity of each choice. The different epistemological elements that come into play confuse even the most morally apt as it is far from clear what is the best way to respond. When faced with a situation such as that in ‘Jim and the Indians’, the ethical choice demanded, is by no means a simple one. “When dilemmas such as ‘Jim and the Indians’ demand an ethical choice, is deciding by dice throw: better just as good or worse than: deciding via Kant’s Categorical Imperative and Bentham’s Hedonistic Calculus? Why? Which may be to do with my sleep deprivation… If only in that I can’t currently see anything wrong with it. I wasn’t sure exactly how it would turn out, but I think it is reasonable. Bentham envisaged the calculus could be used for criminal law reform: given a crime of a certain kind it would be possible to work out the minimum penalty necessary for its prevention.This is an essay I wrote over the last few days for my Media Ethics subject. We should next consider the alternative courses of action: ideally, this method will determine which act has the best tendency, and therefore is right. When determining what action is right in a given situation, we should consider the pleasures and pains resulting from it, in respect of their intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, fecundity (the chance that a pleasure is followed by other ones, a pain by further pains), purity (the chance that pleasure is followed by pains and vice versa), and extent (the number of persons affected). hedone pleasure) a method of working out the sum total of pleasure and pain produced by an act, and thus the total value of its consequences also called the felicific calculus sketched by Bentham in chapter 4 of his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789).
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