philosophy paper III

Utilitarianism will usually explain our decisions about right and wrong quite
well. For instance a utilitarian could easily show how his theory
demonstrates the immoral nature of an action like child molestation.
Although the pedophile does gain some pleasure, his victim suffers a life
time of tragic consequences, which massively outweigh the gain to the
molester. So total aggregate happiness is not increased and the action is
therefore immoral according to their theory.

However, imagine that you see a dangerously overweight child eating a
triple-decker ice cream cone. Only a few feet away are three very poor,
underfed and envious children. You decide to take the ice cream from the
overweight child and give it to the three starving waifs. This seems like a
win-win. The overweight child is momentarily unhappy but it is better for
his health, and ultimately overall, for him not to eat that ice cream. The
three poor children get a welcome treat that they would otherwise rarely get,
and because of its rarity it will have no negative health effects for them. If,
as it seems, everyone wins then utility would say to do this.

However that choice doesn’t seem right. There are lots of reasons why, but
none of those reasons seem to be utility.

Can a utilitarian answer this and show that utility does give us the answer
that we know to be correct, and that those ‘other reasons’, which seemed to
be something other than utility, really amount to utility?

General comments: This paper topic is somewhat more involved than the
previous three. It requires you to run through several steps in the argument
and could require a somewhat longer paper to adequately discuss it. You
can either defend utilitarianism or criticise it. (In this case it is probably
much easier to defend it.)

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