DEVRY ETHC 445 Week 5 DQ 1 Life and Death - Politics and Ethics

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DEVRY ETHC 445 Week 5 DQ 1 Life and Death -
Politics and Ethics

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• ETHC 445 Week 5 DQ 1 Life and Death - Politics
  and Ethics
• There are three basic propositions in standard
  Utilitarianism (Please be sure to listen to
  Mill's audio lecture before joining this threaded
  discussion)

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• 1.    Actions are judged right and wrong solely
  on their consequences  that is, nothing else
  matters except the consequence, and right actions
  are simply those with the best consequences.
• 2.    To assess consequences, the only thing that
  matters is the amount of happiness and
  unhappiness caused that is, there is only one
  criterion and everything else is irrelevant.
• 3.    In calculating happiness and unhappiness
  caused, nobodys happiness counts any more than
  anybody elses that is, everybodys welfare is
  equally important and the majority rules.
• In specific cases where justice and utility are
  in conflict, it may seem expedient to serve the
  greater happiness through quick action that
  overrules consideration for justice. There is a
  side to happiness that can call for rushed
  decisions and actions that put decision-makers
  under the pressure of expediency.
• Here is a dilemma for our classYou are the
  elected district attorney. You receive a phone
  call from a nursing home administrator who was a
  good friend of yours in college. She has a
  waiting list of 3,000 people who will die if they
  don't get into her nursing home facility within
  the next 3 weeks, and she currently has 400
  patients who have asked (or their families have
  asked on their behalf) for the famous Dr. Jack
  Kevorkian's (fictitious) sister,

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• Dr. Jill Kevorkian, for assistance in helping
  them die. The 3,000 people on the waiting list
  want to live. She (the nursing home
  administrator) wants to know if you would agree
  to "look the other way" if she let in Dr. Jill to
  assist in the suicide of the 400 patients who
  have requested it, thus allowing at least 400 of
  the 3,000 on the waiting list in.
• 1.    How would we use Utilitarianism to "solve"
  this dilemma?
• 2.    What ethics did your friend, the nursing
  home administrator, use in deciding to call you?
• 3.    What ethics are you using if you just "look
  the other way" and let it happen?
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