The Survival Lottery Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 1

The Survival Lottery - Research Paper Example It also offers another analogy that serves to counter the survival lottery. First, the assumption is that the lottery speaks about the traditional utilitarianism as there are other flavors of the same that have been considered less influential and yield different results. It is easy to put ones thumb on a scale whenever arguing concerning ethical status of acts under utilitarianism as utilitarianism takes no account of other things but the sort of things suggested. They seek to maximize pleasure, not simple hedonistic pleasure, but something that stands in for what people find desirable (Tittle 34). This includes moral sentiments, feelings and emotions. If the society finds the lottery unacceptable inherently, then there is bound to be displeasure and pain associated with its execution that could outweigh any good done in saving lives. ` This type of argument sidesteps the thrust of the thought experiment, but it aims at illustrating how acceptable it is to kill an innocent person under utilitarianism to save others. In isolating this point, the imagination could be that the survival lottery minimizes pain, maybe spearheaded by few people who are not known by the public as argued by Kuhse and Singer (67). Perhaps those selected are told they are selected for a heroic government mission so that if they do not return their families are left proud to be associated with the loss. Maybe the deaths of the selected are quick and without pain and the people are not pre-informed so as not to traumatize them. Maybe the recipients of the organs are never to be informed that someone was killed so that they do not feel guilt. This would make the public oblivious so that the only people that would be suffering from guilt would be the few who had to do the task. And maybe even this would be accomplished by sociopaths so that no one would feel the guilt at all. What then would the argument be? A utilitarian would seem to be forced to accept the