Background: Utilitarianism is a moral theory that

contends the following:

Our practices, private or public, are right insofar as
they promote the greatest good for the greatest
number; and they are wrong to the extent that
they do otherwise.
For modern utilitarians, good = pleasure; and this
pleasure is measured by counting preferences
• Phase 1: Basic Idea
• A. Friends Night Out
• You and your two friends, Elaine, and Jerry, are
planning a night out at the movies. Jerry wants to
see Terminator; you and Elaine want to Matrix
Reloaded; but Jerry has already seen Reloaded and
hated it.
• As a utilitarian, how would you decide on which
movie to see?
Phase 2: Dilemmas
A. The Dialysis Clinic
You are a hospital administrator. Your facility is
the only hospital in the region with a kidney
dialysis machine. Two persons come for
dialysis at the same time and each of them
needs to use the machine immediately or face
almost certain death. There is no time to take
one of them to another facility. One patient is
an important businessman in his late 60s, with
a spouse, 3 children and seven
grandchildren. The other patient is a homeless
woman in her 30s, with no spouse and one
child. Which one should receive dialysis?
What do you do? Why?
• B. The Trolley Problem
• There is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks.
Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and
unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You
are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a
lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a
different set of tracks. Unfortunately, you notice that there
is one person on the side track. You do not have the ability
to operate the lever in a way that would cause the trolley to
derail without loss of life (for example, holding the lever in
an intermediate position so that the trolley goes between
the two sets of tracks, or pulling the lever after the front
wheels pass the switch, but before the rear wheels do). You
have two options: (1) Do nothing, and the trolley kills the
five people on the main track. (2) Pull the lever, diverting
the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person.
Which is the correct choice? Why?