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Let us say that I am driving a car, look for a short second at my phone as I've done multiple times before, and then BAM, I ram my car into a pedestrian. Blood, horror, brains, murder.

If you are an utilitarian, do you view my choices during this event [choice 1: drive a car, choice 2: look at my phone for a second] to be equally as bad as a person who killed the pedestrian with full intent?

If true, then this seems to be an open and shut case - utilitarianism, at least in the simple "only consequences matter"-version, makes no sense. If not true, please point out why not. Thanks.

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  • Utilitarianism seems to imply the idea that we can easily/intuitively calculate the consequences of our actions. That, of course, is utterly false. We cannot know what our actions will entail, except ex-post facto.
    – Luís Henrique
    Commented Dec 3, 2016 at 23:02
  • This is basically the problem with only-realized-consequences act utilitarianism. One cannot in fact predict what the consequences of one's action will be to a completely certain extent and thus a big part of an action being right or wrong would just be luck.
    – virmaior
    Commented Jan 3, 2017 at 9:16

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Probability of each outcome is what matters

In act-utilitarianism the probability of different outcomes is taken into account such that the probability of the murder is taken into account and compared for the case where:

  • You purposely drive into someone.

  • You pick up your phone (which is known to be the cause of some accidents).

The outcome is the same but the probability is not the same for each case so they are not judged as equally bad.

Though of course you can also argue that the purposeful murder brings more pleasure since you fulfilled your intended action and, as such, would bring more happiness to you especially considering the action would haunt someone who did it by accident. It also depends on why you wished that person dead....and so on. In the end it is difficult to judge any action in general terms since, to determine the utility, you must know specifics of who will be happy and who will be hurt.

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From a direct (act-)utilitarian PoV, yes you are equally bad(or good - if the person you killed was a threat to the society). That's what makes utilitarianism so practically useless.

But there's a rule-based utilitarianism, which formulates certain rules based on their expected utility, and these rules are to be followed at all times. The breaking of these rules is unethical. And since these rules are weighted by utility - "Don't kill innocent people" will be more important than the "Always be attentive" rule - The act of yours would be much less unethical.

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