What does Utilitarianism Has to do with a Surgeon

The guiding principle, being utilitarianism, is to act in the way which will always produce the maximum overall amount of goodness in the world. The basic purpose of morality is making the world a much better place to live in (Hinman, 2014). Morality is also about producing some good consequences and not having any kind of good intension. It also states that we should be doing whatever brings the maximum benefit (intrinsic value) to the entire humanity. Case: rule utilitarian vs. act utilitarian The case under study is of the surgeon who has to decide killing of a normal, but unjust person for the sake of saving five sick people. An act utilitarian in this case would be considering every probable†¦show more content†¦Opposition to transplant In addition, most of the observers intuitively say it is utterly wrong. Hence, a challenge is eventually posed to the utilitarian, as it mostly seems to go on without even saying that the transplant would be an act of greatest utility mainly for the cost of one’s life as well as the surgeon’s time, as five other people could also be saved (Degrees of clarity, n.d.). Considering the situation, then it will result into a one-to-five cost-to-advantage ratio, which is not just preponderance, but only weightily so. Here it is important to discuss about Foot’s views as he avoids the problem by saying that the doctrine of doing as well as allowing draws more moral distinction specifically between the actions which we wilfully execute and also the ones we which we allow to take place. In this case, it can be said that it is morally sound to let all the five men die as killing the sixth man would be actually a murder. On the contrary, doing nothing, while being unfortunate, seems very much justified due to the fact that we can do nothing on our own but just let it happen on its own. At this point, a better means to explain the transplant case is required, and for that, preferably we will only use the fundamental tenets associated to utilitarianism. 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