Submitted by: Submitted by gearxander
Views: 497
Words: 525
Pages: 3
Category: Philosophy and Psychology
Date Submitted: 11/14/2011 08:10 PM
10/21/08
Pilosophy 12:30 – 1:45
Question 1:
Three people stranded out at sea. Several days pass and no help is in sight. Two of the men decide to kill the third without his consent. They feast on his flesh ansd survive starvation until a ship rescuse them. This is the Dudly and Stevens case. I will show a form of consequentialism in which the court would find them inocent. Then I will give another form of consequentialism that a court would find them guilty.
The basic consequensialist moral theory has three main parts to it. In a nutshel they are:
1. A list of countable goods
2. Definition of right and wrong in terms of good
3. All conclutions are impersonal
The first premise is almost as simple as it sounds. A list of countable goods is just that, it is a list of things such as people, donuts, kittens, etc… The goods must be countable. For example one could count the number of happy people but one could not quantify the happiness of an individual. One cannot say that he has X amount of happines. However, one can say that there are X amount of happy people. This applies to actions as well. An action can produce X amount of good or X amount of bad. So the amount of good or bad produced can be calculated by the outcome alone. The goods must be intrisicly good. That means it is good in and of itself. For example food is intrisicly good because our bodies need it to survive.
The second premise defines what is right or wrong in terms of the ammount of good rationaly expected to be produced. For example if more kittens are better than less kittens then one should make the choice that allows for more kittens. Granted it is impossible to know all the outcomes of choices. So the consequesialist makes the decision that is rationaly expected to produce the best outcome, the most good produced. To paraphrase my profesor, an act is right/wrong based on the good/bad it is rationaly expected to produce. The consequestialist only looks at the good produced...