Act Utilitarianism Case Study

The essential part of utilitarianism, whether it is Act or Rule, is to promote the greatest overall utility for the given situation. If we look in terms of Utilitarianism, one would be in favor of killing Tom to save the other four children. Even though, Tom would be killed, he would promote overall utility by saving four people through his one body. This reminds me a lot of the Trolley problem we studied in Unit five. They killed one man to save multiple. This may be considered immoral in a way, but according to Act Utilitarianism, the correct choice and the one that promotes overall utility would be to kill Tom and use his body to save the four siblings. In an Act Utilitarian’s mind, they would first think “In what way could I promote the greatest utility for every single person in the situation?” They must then think about the situation. The mother and father could either lose Tom, or they could lose their other four children. The Doctor could either kill Tom and save the four children or let Tom live and watch the others die
without being able to do anything. Tom either dies and saves his siblings or lives and watches his siblings die, while knowing he could have saved them. The siblings either all die to let their brother live or they all live and let their brother die. If you look at all the smaller situations going on in the big picture, it is evident what the greatest choice would be. Killing Tom would let the Doctor only see one death, as opposed to four, let the parents keep four out of the five of their children, let four children live, and let Tom die knowing he saved his siblings. The overall utility would connect to this choice very clearly.
This case proves the Consequentialist’s, John Stuart Mill’s approach to the situation.
If we were lookin gat the case in a consequentialist’s point of view, we would still kill Tom to save the four other children. Consequentialism is defined as “a general approach to ethics that maintains that consequences –and only consequences- are what make something morally good or bad” (95.) The consequence or killing Tom would be saving four other children, therefore the ratio would remain 4:1 and the consequences would be desirable. Mill’s explains that some pleasures fall on a higher plane than others. This would be the reason that killing Tom would be okay. One of the highest pleasures, according to Mill is helping others. In this case, Tom is dying, but he dies knowing he did it to help four others live. That in Utilitarianism and Consequentialism would promote the greatest utility, therefore be the greatest choice to make in the
situation.