Would you live your life by....
By jazz_123
@jazz_123 (211)
February 19, 2009 7:34am CST
Would you live your life by the concept of utilitarianism? If you don't know what utilitarianism is; it is basically an ethical theory which states the greatest amound of happiness for the greatest amount of people. So for example, if an old lady has a house built in the middle of the motor way and it has to be knocked off. What would you say? Would it be the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people? Well yes, because drivers would get to where they want quicker, and also it's not practical for the old lady to have the house built in the middle of the motor way. However no, because the old lady's house may have senti-mental value and it's also may be of emotional attachment to her, and she may have had it for a long time. By applying the concept of utilitarianism, a utilitarianist would say if the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, thus it creating more happiness for the greatest people, then the old lady's house should be taken down. Do you think you could live your life by the concept of utilitarianism? What do you think?
2 responses
@imaginearea (363)
•
19 Feb 09
Tough question. I can see the practical reason for having one old lady move from her home because a greater number of people would be able to benefit from the motorway, but there are probably other scenarios where benefit to the greater number of people would prove to be a lot more unethical....I can't think of any such scenarios off-hand but they always exist in these types of questions.
@forslahiri (1042)
• India
19 Feb 09
Hi,
Possibly U will agree the concept of'utilitarianism' is based on "UTILITY".Now utility value is different for different person(Example U have given).Therefore,it is a value of Life perceived by 'greatest number'.well, to satisfy MAJORITY- Minority is ignored.fact of Life is this!How one can ignore this concept???
=Lahiri,Kolkata,India.
