Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
the information is made available to all of the key stakeholders, is a good way for a
diverse group of people to come to a collective decision about a controversial topic.
For example, suppose your state needs to build a new prison because the num-
ber of prisoners is growing. Everybody understands the prison must be built some-
where in the state, but nobody wants the prison in their neighborhood. A panel of
trusted citizens considers a variety of siting options and, after a series of public hear-
ings to gather evidence, weighs the pluses and minuses of each location. At the end
of the process, the panel makes public the individual scores and grand totals and
recommends the site with the highest grand total. While some will be unhappy at
the prospect of a prison being built near their homes, an open and impartial process
can speed their acceptance of the decision.
3.
It is comprehensive.
Act utilitarianism allows the moral agent to take into account all the elements of a
particular situation. Do you remember the problem of having to decide what to say
about your mother's awful haircut? Utilitarianism allows you to take into account
the emotional distress that telling the truth would cause to you and your mother.
That harm could tilt the balance toward telling your mother what she wants to hear.
1.
When performing the utilitarian calculus, it is not clear where to draw the line, yet
where we draw the line can change the outcome of our evaluation.
In order to perform our calculation of total net happiness produced by an action, we
must determine whom to include in our calculation and how far into the future to
consider the consequences. In our highway example, we counted the people who
lost their homes and the people who would travel the new highway in the next
25 years. The proposed highway may cut neighborhoods in two, making it more
difficult for some children to get to school, but we did not factor in consequences
for neighbors. The highway may cause people to change their commutes, increasing
traffic congestion in other parts of town, but we did not count those people either.
The highway may be in existence more than 25 years, but we didn't look beyond that
date. We cannot include all morally relevant beings for all time into the future. We
must draw the line somewhere. Deciding where to draw the line can be a difficult
problem.
2.
It is not practical to put so much energy into every moral decision.
Correctly performing the utilitarian calculus requires a great deal of time and effort.
It seems unrealistic that everyone would go to so much trouble every time they were
faced with a moral problem.
A response to this criticism is that act utilitarians are free to come up with moral
“rules of thumb.” For example, a moral rule of thumb might be, “It is wrong to
lie.” In most situations it will be obvious this is the right thing to do, even without
performing the complete utilitarian calculus. However, an act utilitarian always
reserves the right to go against the rule of thumb if particular circumstances should
