Utilitarianism Case Study -- Death Literature Review

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Nor is the fact that a murderer becomes a "model prisoner" after the fact an appropriate consideration looking back on what his punishment should have been without the benefit of omniscient hindsight. If a criminal commits a morally heinous crime, imposing the death penalty might be justified under Act Utilitarianism as a form of collective self-defense, based on the same rationale for recognizing self-defense killing by individuals. That might be the case where society must choose between allocating the only available funds to child welfare or to the costs of providing lifelong custodial care to some types of offenders. At the time of the crime, Act Utilitarianism could have justified the death penalty based on the seriousness of the crime if allocating funds to housing offenders sentenced to life in prison came at the expense of other (innocent) members of society. All of the interests it would serve support the greater good of society, such as by deterring crime, protecting the general public, and valuing the benefit to deserving recipients of public funds over those who forfeit those rights because of their prior conduct.

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In my view, Rule Utilitarianism is not a justifiable approach to responding to volitional choices and behavior. It permits morally absurd results such as the "moral duty" to return escaped slaves to their masters in 1860 or the duty to provide truthful information to a Nazi government agent searching homes for Jewish families. Rule Utilitarianism would require complying with duly-passed laws about disclosing the whereabouts of escaped slaves and of the intended civilian victims of any murderous society that also exploited human beings as slaves. By contrast, Act Utilitarianism is flexible enough to recognize objective justifications by circumstance and more complex factual relationships than the one-dimensional all-or-none application of rules that benefit society overall, despite producing morally absurd results….....

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