A634.2.4.RB_HallMike

Bottom line, I think that both theories are good in their own respects, however you must use pieces of each to get the best set of ideals out of them because each isolated is not complete.  For example, take consequentialism and specifically Utilitarianism.  As a military officer, there are multiple facets of being in the military that exude Utilitarianism.  For example, a triage – instead of wasting time and resources on people that are probably going to die anyway, I instead focus on people that might be saved.  This would go against some views other hold that all life is the same and that equal effort should be put in to conserve it.  Another example would be sending someone to their doom to save the lives of others.  Take for example the movie U571.  The officer orders the small enlisted guy to get back into the bilge to shut the leaking valve so that they can shoot a torpedo to save the ship knowing that he will probably drown in the process – under Utilitarianism, this is perfectly ok and to some respects I agree with it.  With that being said, you must be careful to not apply it to all situations.  For example, some Utilitarianism theoriest argued that from the theory you could conclude that it would be ok to sacrifice 1 person to harvest their organs in order to save the lives of others.  I do like Mill’s discussion on how the goal of people should be to promote happiness.  Additionally, the point that your own happiness must not be the overriding consideration – it should be looked at as if you are considering someone else’s happiness – would go a long way in this world if people thought about that more often.

Moving to Deontology, I concur with the author’s statement on page 31 when he states that, “deontology relects the way most of us acquired and developed our moral beliefs” (Lafollette, 2007).  In fact, I would have partially defined ethics by stating it is a set of rules to live by prior to this class.  I also like the aspect of Deontology that essentially there are universal truths out there.  It is completely irrelevant of the consequences associated with an act, something is wrong or right because it just is wrong or right.  I especially liked how the author compared breaking down complex rules in football and thus making them more understandable to why some moral rules are overly simplistic.  Deontologist would argue that when we say something like “don’t lie”, that is an overly simplistic version of an underlying rule that is just too complex to initially teach.  It is only when you are old enough to really understand that you are taught that it very well may be ok to lie in certain situations.  This then leads to a problem with Deontology which is which rules are more important than others.  Kant would argue that there is only 1 rule – the good will is the underlying principle (i.e. you can never act wrongly if you have good will in mind).  Clearly this isn’t true because there can be good will that is misguided.