Utilitarianism
avoid a greater violation of rights by others, and so would lead to a minimumweighted score for rights violations in society . ’ 29
Nozick is wrong. In this hypothetical example a rational person who heard that a mob is on its way would not ‘ try justifying punishing another he knows to be innocent ’ (ibid.) No rational person comes to the conclusion that to maximize utility we must stop the mob by punishing an innocent person! A real-life example could be the Brixton Riots in which we didn’t stop the rioting by punishing the policeman who shot Mark Duggan dead. In Nozick’s thought experiment , the way we should ‘minim ize ’ rights violations (not have ‘ fewer ’ rights violations) is to stop all rights violations, by deploying police. But let us say, for the sake of argument, there aren’t enough police to stop the mob. Another better decision (than the one Nozick suggests) whichwould violate fewer rights would be to pretend to punish the innocent person to appease themob and secretly evacuate the innocent person to a nice hotel to compensate for their trouble. Nozick makes the mistake of confusing ‘ fewer ’ rights violations with The Minimum. It’s sneaky of him to create a hypothetical world where you limit the options of the decision-maker to ones which are all b8d. If you offer only b8d options, it becomes easy to discredit a moral theory. When constructing a moral dilemma, the highest utility option of the ones offered is very unappealing. If we consider the actual utilitarian decisionwhen all choices are available, it’s far more appealing. 30 Stopping amob with the police is not morally repugnant, whereas, with Nozick’s two given options, both are morally repugnant. In the TV drama Spooks , the protagonists are repeatedly placed in situations where the options both seem dire (e.g. the diplomat is shot or the embassy explodes) yet they repeatedly manage to take the utilitarian action, managing to come upwith a cunning plan to save both the diplomat and the embassy. If you ask a child what they would do in the ‘Jim and the Indians’ thought experiment, the most common response is to shoot the soldier so that no one has to die. In real life an adult would try to convince the soldier to change his mind or negotiate a way out of the situation. This is an inherently human quality 31 which cannot be discarded. Time and again humans pursue the actual utilitarian solution to dilemmas to which it initially appears no such option exists. 32 Nozick also continues his flawed example by claiming ‘ Utilitarianismdoesn’t, it is said, properly ta ke rights and their non-violations into account. ’ 33 But, if we observe how justice contributes to utility through stability and if we takemymodified definition of utility, I reject this idea. Justice is somethingwe desire; contrary to the desire for pleasure when we desire justice, we are desiring pain for another person, for 29 Nozick 1974: 27. 30 Just like in real life. The more options are restricted the more the hypothetical situation becomes further detached from reality. 31 Research on task concentration shows the hormone noradrenaline (signaled to be produced by the anterior cingulate cortex) causes us to think of what else we could be doing. When doing an action, the concentration of noradrenaline slowly increases until we experience distraction. Since it is always present in our brains we are always, to some degree, questioning ourselves with what other actions we could possibly be doing. I believe the feeling of aporia (experienced to some level with every decision and action) is the brain considering the many possibilities of the situation. 32 However, argument aside, the idea of rights in the utilitarian sense I find quite ridiculous. Desiring rights is a means to the end of happiness, and rights as a construct is liquid and unsubstantial. 33 Nozick 1974: 28.
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