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November 18, 2018, 05:32:45 PM |
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Recently I started learning about Ethics and I found out two theories: theory of egoism and utilitarian theory.
Theory of egoism or ethical egoism states that the person must always pursue their self interest. Telling one person how to behave in the society such as asking them to be more empathetic is against this theory. You're asking an individual to behave differently than what he "feels".
Main criticism for the theory: "Faced with a situation of limited resources, egoists would consume as much of the resource as they could, making the overall situation worse for everybody."
Utilitarian theory is the one which produces the greatest well-being of the greatest number of people. By this ethical point of view, you prefer to sacrifice a minority for the greatest number of people. I read somewhere that under utilitarian, you can also LIE for the sake of making others feeling better. Kind of what some politicians did in the history if you think well enough!
Main criticism for the theory: The theory tries to quantify well being by assuming consequences. In some cases everything may go as planned, in others.... One interesting example is Ford which released years ago a car called "Ford Pinto"
The problem with the car is that its design made that, in case of accident from behind, it would explode because of the fuel tank. Ford could decide to modify each of the 12.5 million cars for just $11/car resulting in $137.5 million. The organisation calculated that, if there would be 1,000 fatalities it would have to pay less than $15 million in lawsuit, resulting in just $1.2/car! In this case, some 500 people died but Ford won the legal case and seems that they didn't even pay any fines!
Ethically, not correct but it still worked. Are you an ethical person? Do you believe that being ethical is necessary for being successful? What about politicians?
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