Exemplar essay answers

This scenario highlights a number of important aspects of utilitarianism in particular the role of consequences and the use of rules.

We are not told if the driver was using utilitarian principles in order to decide what to do or whether they were just trying to get to hospital as quickly as they could but I shall assume it was the former.

However, there is a further problem in that when consequences are ultimately unknowable, even when the outcome of a particular choice is finally known, to know whether it was the action that maximised happiness it needs to be compared with all the other possible outcomes that can never be known. Some people regard this as a fatal flaw in any consequentialist theory but utilitarians might say that at any stage of the calculations it is only necessary to consider the reasonably foreseeable consequences. In the scenario it would then be unnecessary, for example, for the parents to consider the likelihood of being seen by a better doctor if they arrived later having waited at the lights.

An additional complication, which may change the evaluation of the parent’s decision, is the place of rules in utilitarian thought. Given that Bentham argued against a starving beggar stealing bread from a rich person’s house on the grounds that it would not maximise happiness because it would undermine law and order, one can assume he would argue that in the scenario the parents should not break the rules of the road for the same reason. Obeying the law and following the rules can also be justified by saying that in practice it is more likely to result in people making the right decision than if they try to do the calculation quickly especially when personally involved and subject to bias. In the scenario it can be questioned how objective the parents can be when their child is in pain. However, the claim that breaking the law will always undermine the law ultimately leading to less happiness is unconvincing; it doesn’t seem correct to say that individual decisions in extreme situations will change general behaviour. Nevertheless, society does need rules and not enforcing them will lead to them falling into disrepute. In the scenario, then, it is plausible to say that the utilitarian driver might have been right to calculate that breaking the law in this instance would minimise pain but the police and the legislators would be right to calculate that the law should be enforced. Tensions such as these might suggest that rule utilitarianism is a better option. Act utilitarianism says that an action is right if it maximises happiness; rule utilitarianism says that an action is right if it conforms to a rule which is in place because having the rule maximises happiness even if it means that on this particular occasion the resulting action doesn’t maximise happiness. It is likely that a rule utilitarian will have a rule that says, ‘Obey the law’ in which case the parents should not have jumped the lights. However, they may recognise that in exceptional circumstances it is legitimate to break the law so the rule might be, ‘Obey the law unless, in exceptional circumstances it is clear that it is better to break the law’. It then becomes a debate as to whether this is one of those exceptional circumstances. Rule-based systems also run into the problem of conflicting rules and so rule utilitarians may have a tie-breaker which says, ‘If there is a conflict between two rules then act optimifically’. It would seem that in practice, then, rule utilitarianism collapses into act utilitarianism.

In summary, although they define the right action in different ways and although they may get there in slightly different ways, both act and rule utilitarians would advise the parents that they should obey the law unless it is very clear indeed that this is an exceptional circumstance. If it genuinely was an exceptional circumstance then, hopefully, the police will have escorted them to the hospital rather than having given them a fine.

A simplistic understanding of utilitarianism would suggest the parent breaks the law and, while in some circumstances this may have some immediate appeal, a more considered appraisal of the situation suggests the parent should normally obey the law. Although there are undoubted problems with predicting the future, as an essentially pragmatic theory, utilitarianism has an adequate response to this challenge and gives good guidance as to why the law should be obeyed.