Utilitarianism In Research

Utilitarianism states “Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness” (pg. 863). What this means is that actions are right when the majority of people benefits from it. This principle is assessed based on the consequences of the action, rather than the action itself. Therefore, utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism. If the outcome comes out positive and is useful for majority of the people, it is considered morally good, whereas if the outcome is negative and no one benefits from it, the action is considered immoral. Generally, we try to choose the option that will provide happiness to the majority of people. For an example, you are in charge of obtaining research
This drug claims to act as a prevention for, let’s say, an incurable disease. Gathering research from the few test subjects can possibly help save a lot of people’s lives. So you would probably opt for the decision of using a few test subjects to determine the accuracy of the claims of this new drug, which can help prolong majority of the population’s lives who have this disease. I feel like this theory also has its flaws. For an example, if troops could only protect the president serving the country or sacrificing ten people. The troops would probably be more likely to protect the president because the president is leading the country, which is a more massive population than those ten people. The principle of utility divides into two groups— act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism. I believe for act utilitarianism, it deals with considering all the possible outcomes and picking the best one. I could be wrong, but this is how I interpreted rule utilitarianism: it is based on our actions and if our actions provided happiness and benefits to the majority, then the action is right. Depending on the situation, we might or might not always need to assess the consequences of every action we