Act utilitarianism is the philosophical idea that an action depends entirely on the value of the action’s consequences, rather than the action itself. The action that is perceived to be right, is compared to the alternative actions in the situation. The action that produces the greatest total amount of value, is perceived to be a morally right action. The utility of an action must be calculated to determine how much intrinsic value the action can produce, thus also acquiring a morally right action. On the other hand, rule consequentialism states the goodness or badness of an action is based on the general rules, that produce the best overall consequences set up for a particular society. In other words, an action is morally right if and only if it does not violate the set of rules for that particular society, and also obtains the best outcomes.
The issue being discussed in the following is that of physician assisted suicide. There is much debate on this topic but in order to evaluate this issue correctly, some background information is required. Suppose a sickly patient, Janice, is suffering immensely from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). This disease induces the death of motor neurons in the brain that control voluntary muscles. Motor neurons control the actions in which your muscles perform. As they start to die, the strength of the brain to signal and control muscle movement diminishes. When voluntary muscle action is gradually affected, Janice will lose the ability to speak, eat, move and breathe. ALS unfortunately progresses rapidly and is fatal. Janice understands her circumstances and has wished she be given a painless life-ending drug. Under these conditions, suppose Janice lives in a country where there are no laws against such actions. The question still stands, is it morally right for a physician to administer a fatal dose of the drug to Janice, given her desire?
It seems blatant that Janice wishes to end her life considering she is in tremendous pain and her quality of life is dwindling. A concept in philosophy known as Ethical Hedonism states that experiences of pleasure are intrinsically good, and experiences of pain are intrinsically bad. A famous utilitarian, Jeremy Bentham, supports this idea. Bentham proposed a list of seven elements to calculate the amount of utility in an action; intensity, duration, certainty and uncertainty, propinquity and remoteness, fecundity, purity, and extent. When compared to the occurrence of pleasure and pain, the notion gathered from Bentham’s lists suggests that pleasure and pain can be measured. This now allows for pleasure and pain to designate a numerical value that can be added or subtracted to find the amount of utility an action has. For this case of physician assisted suicide, the view of ethical hedonism could be applied to the quality of Janice’s life. The intensity of her pain is very dreadful, and the duration of that pain is never ending. Bentham also states that fecundity is the likelihood that pleasure will follow pleasure and pain will follow pain. On the contrary, purity indicates that neither pleasure nor pain will be followed by the opposite sort. For Janice’s case, her family may experience sadness after her death. If the assisted suicide was performed and the family experienced sadness, the situation would lack purity. Again, suppose the assisted suicide was performed and Janice’s family experienced happiness, she was no longer in pain and in a better place, the situation would have fecundity. Notice that Bentham’s view of ethical hedonism would only be effective if the assisted suicide was in fact intrinsically good.
Everyone shares the value of personal liberty, this means you have the freedom to choose the actions that will affect your own life directly. Voluntary euthanasia is when a patient has willfully made a decision to end their own life but may simply be incapable of carrying out the action themselves and requires the assistance of someone else. The key word here is assistance. Some believe euthanasia is considered murder because it requires a lethal dose of prescribed medication that is intended to end a life, which is viewed as intrinsically bad. This example could be used to explain Rule Consequentialism. In order to agree with this view in philosophy, a set of rules that would essentially make a society the happiest, must be established. One rule that is common in many societies is that taking away a human life for any circumstance is wrong. So, in terms of rule consequentialism, Janice’s physician assisted suicide would be morally wrong. Another common belief that may be suitable as a rule for a society, pertains to religion, stating that suicide is a sin in God’s eyes, therefore, physician assisted suicide would be morally wrong. To go into more detail of rule consequentialism, another famous utilitarian, John Stuart Mill, proposes the idea of qualitative hedonism. Bentham had his idea of quantitative hedonism. Comparing these two concepts, Bentham relies strictly on intensity and duration, to decide whether an action is morally right. Mill relies on quality.
Roger Crisp is a Professor of Moral Philosophy, he opposes what could be wrong with qualitative hedonism, with the story Haydn versus the oyster. Haydn lived a long healthy life and experienced a variety of intense pleasures. An angel offers you the choice of Haydn’s life or the oysters. The oyster will live for many, many years. If you use Bentham’s quantitative scale, eventually the duration of the oyster’s life will experience more pleasure than Haydn did during his life, suggesting that oyster’s life is more valuable.
Rule consequentialism is a benefit to a society as a whole and not to an individual’s benefit. Based on Mill’s perception, Janice’s physician assisted suicide is in the benefit of an individual’s own wishes and does not give any advantage to the society therefore it is morally wrong.
The standard of explanatory power is a moral theory that attempts to discover not only moral principles that support our considered moral beliefs but also principles that explain what it is about actions that make them good or bad. If we go back and analyze our two stances: act utilitarianism and rule consequentialism. A verdict needs to be addressed for each stance. If a judge were to be presented this case, and used act utilitarianism to support their verdict, they would suggest that physician assisted suicide is in fact morally right. Act utilitarianism supports the idea that if an action is breaking a rule but still produces more overall goodness, then that rule may be broken. Meaning that act utilitarianism is somewhat situational and entails the most amount of goodness. This is justifiable if and only if the action produces more overall goodness than if the action wasn’t performed at all. Now consider a judge that used rule consequentialism to support their verdict. Utilitarianism expresses to not kill, but in this instance, it is said to be broken. Rule consequentialism states that moral rules are formed to allow for a society to make the best choices based on morality. Physician assisted suicide would break the moral rule of do not kill. A verdict in this case would advise that physician assisted suicide is morally wrong.