Sunday, September 22, 2013

Utilitarianisms Moral Conflict


Suppose there is a doctor about to perform an operation on a female patient. The patient is unconscious; under general anaesthetic. Suppose that the doctor is considering raping the woman. And the doctor is assured that he can: make sure he does it without physically harming her and that no one will ever find out about it, apart from him, not even the woman. Suppose he also knows that both he and the woman are healthy; they do not have any sexually transmitted infections and the doctors knows that the woman is infertile, so she will not be able to become pregnant. In this situation the doctor is considering the moral status of the act of raping this woman.
What does utilitarianism tell him? Clearly, no one is going to ever suffer. That is assured. And he, the doctor, will derive pleasure from the act. Therefore, not only does utilitarianism tells us that the act of raping the patient is not immoral, it tells us that, in fact, the act is positively moral because it increases the happiness of the doctor. The doctor, under utilitarianism, would actually be morally obligated to rape this woman. 


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