Thursday, July 18, 2019
Flight 93 and Utilitarianism in Times of Crisis
On kinfolk 11, 2001 United Airlines trajectorys 93 crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. It has been theorized that the crash was a result of the passengers trying to regain verify after it had been hijacked by four members of the Al Qaeda terrorist group in their feat fly the aircraft into either the White can or the U.S. Capitol building.With that being said, lets change the scenario a little bit. read that none of the passengers attempted to interfere with the terrorists game to crash the plane into Washington D.C. Would it be acceptable for the government to launch legions aircraft to intercept and possibly shoot voltaic pile the airliner knowing that solely 44 large number on board would be killed? From a utile mindset my answer would subscribe to be yes.The whole point skunk utilitarianism is to find the one action which maximizes utility, meaning, producing the greatest net benefit. When all things rent been considered in that respect is only one r ight action. It looks at what is good for the greatest number which meaning that it is possible to do slightlything that has a dictatorial net benefit for the majority only if may be very(prenominal) catastrophic to another segment of the population.In the case of flight 93, shooting megabucks the airliner and sacrificing 44 lives would project, in turn, save the lives of hundreds of people on the ground. Preventing the terrorists from ambit their destination would provoke averted the likelihood that a large number of our elected officials would have been severely injured or killed. Also, it would have prevented the potential closedown of the U.S. Government, a shutdown that would have had negative effects mat up around the world.This brings to light an interesting question. be we more likely to accept the theme of utilitarianism in times of crisis? Again, I would have to answer yes. People tend to run toward and readily accept structure and guidance, particularly in times of crisis. By applying a utilitarian style of cerebration, everything is broken down into costs and benefits and can be quantified and rationalized.There ar times that we may find utilitarian style of thinking to be to our advantage. For example, in times of crisis, however, I dont feel that this makes the utilitarian theory universally acceptable because utilitarianism has the potential to be very un middling or unfair. It is human temperament to apply a mix of all these different theories to our every day decision-making process. We cant just apply one style of thinking to the situation. I guess this is why some decisions seem nearly impossible to make.
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