CaseEthics
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Frameworks

Core framework

Utilitarianism

Maximize aggregate well-being.

Guiding principle

An act is right insofar as it produces the greatest balance of well-being over suffering across all affected parties.

Key thinkers

Jeremy Bentham · John Stuart Mill · Peter Singer

Strengths

  • Impartial: everyone's welfare counts equally.
  • Action-guiding in policy and triage where trade-offs are unavoidable.
  • Empirically tractable — consequences can, in principle, be measured.

Common objections

  • Permits horrific acts if the sums come out right (organ harvesting objection).
  • Ignores the separateness of persons — treats individuals as vessels of utility.
  • Predicting consequences reliably is often impossible.

Mini-example

A hospital has one ventilator and two patients. Utilitarianism recommends whichever allocation produces the most expected life-years of decent quality.