Their view is that we should create a set of rules that, if followed, would produce the greatest amount of total happiness. Rule utilitarians, in whose camp we can place Mill, adopt a different moral decision-procedure. While Bentham does suggest that we should have “rules of thumb” against such actions, for typically they will lead to unforeseen painful consequences, in the case as simply described the act utilitarian appears powerless to deny that such a killing is required in order to maximise total pleasure (just add your own details to secure this conclusion for the act utilitarian). In this case, it would seem that total pleasure is best promoted by killing the one healthy patient, harvesting his organs and saving the other five lives their pleasure outweighs the cost to the formerly healthy patient.
Imagine a case where a doctor had five patients requiring new organs to stop their death and one healthy patient undergoing a routine check. Judith Jarvis Thomson (1929–) raised the problem of the “transplant surgeon”. However, this focus on the outcome of individual acts can sometimes lead to odd and objection-raising examples. In addition to a difference in views regarding the importance of the quality of a pleasure, Mill and Bentham are also separated by reference to Act and Rule Utilitarianism and although such terms emerged only after Mill’s death, Mill is typically considered a rule utilitarian and Bentham an act utilitarian.Īn act utilitarian, such as Bentham, focuses only on the consequences of individual actions when making moral judgments.
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