Wait a minute! This is just a trolley problem in disguise!

I’m in the camp that Utilitarianism gets the right answer here (not to frame the innocent person) as long as having a functioning society matters in the long run. But I believe that Utilitarianism is difficult to apply in general because of the difficulty in quantifying happiness and because of the uncertainty of future events.

Utilitarianism lacks proper humility because it requires omniscience to accurately account for innumerable interconnected consequences. As Gandalf said, "Even the very wise cannot see all ends".

Yes, I bite the bullet on Sheriff, as well as Transplant. These arguments are designed to mislead our moral intuitions by (1) smuggling in real world knowledge about likely additional consequences, even though the thought experiments explicitly rule those consequences out, and (2) creating heavily biased emotional focus on some of the sentient beings involved relative to others. Thinking about Sheriff generally makes us imagine how horrific it would be to be falsely accused, convicted and executed. It steals focus from the people who would die in the riot, condensing them into a number as an afterthought. A version of Sheriff that would be fair to our intuitions would be one that had us read a name and description of 101 people in order, including the way they might die in the riots, thus evoking similar empathy for all of them, and then asked, "should one of these people you've read about be framed and executed while the other 100 live their lives, or should 100 of them die in the painful way you've read?"

This Sheriff Counterexample sounds very similar to Trolley Problem.

The counter argument to the Sheriff example is so easy that I am surprised this Sheriff argument gains any ground. It is basically the equivalent of the child wants a cookie or will throw a tantrum. We all know, for many reason of habituation, conditioning, setting standards, future positive outcomes, that even though the tantrum may be big, stuff may break, the child may be unhappy for X amount of time, and this may make the people living near him unhappy for X amount of time, it is better in the long run to not give into the child's tantrum. It is for the sake of the child, household, etc in the long-run to not support that habit. If a community or society throws a tantrum in the form of a riot, it would still be better to condition truth, justice, etc. for future beings and situations to offer the greatest positive outcome, even if it may be hard in this moment.

Is there a clear statement about over what time frame we are adding up pleasure/pain in utilitarianism? It seems like if you added up over 30 years or 100s of years, we can argue that police framing innocent people, in the long run sum, will lead to more pain, because it would undermine the stability of the state itself, which pretty much everyone agrees leads to better outcomes for people.

my god this is an amazing high production version of the arguments i force my friends to suffer through when i overanalyze a comment they make in a serious note, if you havent been approached by the teaching company (or whatever theyre called now) - you should be

Although not intended as such, this channel sometimes looks like a good source of ideas for game design and storytelling)

key difference being: the townspeople can CHOOSE to riot or abstain from rioting. the innocent man cannot choose whether or not to be framed. the non-aggression principle applies perfectly here.

Fascinating. Is this the original "Trolley Problem?". I'd imagine subsequent thinkers made tweaks to Aggregation, possibly including weighting factors, and moving baselines or changing datums, in order to rescue the sub theory.

It’s difficult to say where the line should be drawn, but I do think that a Sherrif should generally _not_ frame innocent people even with considerable positive utility. This was stated in the video, but the long-term utility of the people’s faith in the justice system is worth a rather large sacrifice, but again it’s not clear how large of a sacrifice would tip the scale the other way.

I think it is worth pointing out that the objection doesn't necessarily put pressure on Aggregation alone, but also Hedonism, as you could keep Aggregation if you ditch the simple 'pleasure/pain' hedonism of Bentham's utilitarianism, and patch in a more Moore-like sense of hedonism, or something else that allows the set of possible goods to contain more than just pleasure, and the set of possible bads to contain more than just pain.

It doesn't seem at all controversial to me. This is in fact how our criminal justice systems work. They aim and intend to punish wrongdoers, but we know that by the very fact of having a system in place, innocent people will inevitably get punished. I don't think that should really be in dispute. When we decide, as a society, to have a criminal justice system, we are saying that the mistakes it will inevitably make are a worthwhile price to pay to avoid the expected harms of a lawless society. Now, we may have strong impulses to guard against wrongful punishment, and assign a very heavy weight to such an outcome (for instance "better a hundred guilty people go free than one innocent person be punished"). But this is a question of the weighting of outcomes, not one of principle. By supporting a criminal justice system at all, we acknowledge that there is *some* level of punishing the blameless that is worthwhile, even if that level is statistically very small. The only way to say you could *never* tolerate the sacrifice of the blameless for the greater good is to say that you do not support a criminal justice system at all, as a point of principle.

The sheriff example reminds me of Ursula Le Guin's short story, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.

This channel makes me proud to be a UNCG alumni :-)

I see how Utilitarianism could be seen as the perfect tool for the powerful. In the name of the greater good they'd be legitimated to do the most evil things, since the added benefit is bigger. I'd say that for it to truly be a moral philosophy, it'd have to try and cause the least damage possible, leaning to causing no damage at all. I have trouble understanding how a moral philosophy could be any good by constantly being forced to do evil deeds, albeit minor ones. Aspiring to be good should be founded on the premise that all evil acts have to be avoided, and alternative ways to do good have to be pursued, even when circunstances seem to lean on going the evil route as the only possible and better course of action.

When you try to add the abstract concept of "justice" to the term "pleasure" (also painted with a broad brush)either you must make it a co-conditon of pleasure, or you need a special theory of situations affected by justice.

Is this example not just a re skin of the famous trolley problem?

Those who support the greater good often don't want themselves to be sacrificed

For the framing of an innocent man, you have to consider long term consequences too. Say you execute the innocent man. The riots don’t occur, but what happens next time the people unleash their wrath on an innocent person? Do you roll over every single time? You created a precedent that justice is irrelevant, so every time the people throw a fit you just give in. In the long run I think it would be worse from a utilitarian perspective as well

It is interesting that this objection touches on the idea that utilitarianism doesn't care about distribution according to moral desert. Do you have another video talking about how utilitarianism doesn't care about distribution for matters of fairness? Because I am actually inclined to agree with Smart on this issue, but not on matters of distributive justice (the extreme countersexample for this is the Utility monster, but it has less extreme ramifications like the kind discussed in "A Theory of Justice")

If we assume the decision will have no consequences not stated by the hypothetical (for example, global harm caused by undermining the rule of law), this is merely a trolley problem.

If the man being framed was a utilitarian, would he not agree to being imprisoned in order to appease the riot? If the entire society was utilitarianist, would there be a riot in the first place?

on one hand, caught or uncaught, the sheriff sets a dangerous precedent that could spiral into something worse, and on the other, the aforementioned homosexuality is a grand example of how cruel laws were and are indeed passed in order to please or reassure the general public. Our conventional truth/honour evaluation of the framing is a very logical insurance policy against lawless societies where no crime is truly accountable.

I think one of the reasons framing the innocent man seems more 'bad' than allowing hundreds of innocent people to be killed in the riot, is the immediacy of both. One is through action - you have to take action to frame an innocent man - while the other is through inaction - if you do nothing, there will be a riot. One is immediate - "framing an innocent man" brings some image to the imagination, probably a specific image, while "hundreds may die" doesn't. "A terrorist bombing has occured. You have been kidnapped by the terrorists. They have informed you through that a random person, selected from the phonebook, has been framed. They give you the choice - press a button and the evidence will be released which clears the man's name - but the button will also set a bomb off at your local church, killing everyone now in attendance. Or do nothing, and allow him to be framed for the crime."

If a lot of people disagree with the innocent person's prosecution and he sent to prison, then gets a retrial due to public outcry, and he is found not guilty through jury nullification, what is the pleasure value of this situation?

The counter example is flawed because the sheriff cannot know that there will definitely be a riot which will definitely lead to deaths. Neither can he definitely know that the framing the man can stop the riot and save lives. Finally a most problematically the true perpetrator may later become known leading to a situation which would cause much greater unhappiness. Utilitarianism is a practical answer to real life moral problems not to highly speculative hypothetical situations.

Not all pleasures or pains are equal. Premeditated execution by the state of an innocent, good member of society is an infinite 'pain'. It preempts all future joys experienced by that person and all joys that person will evoke in others, etc., ad infinitum. It seems that Smart's conclusion justifies slavery. If the sheriff were really that good, they could find the worst inciter(s) of the future riots and condemn (or simply dox) that person rather than some innocent.

Should the Sherrif be looking at more than one action then and selecting the one with a better positive aggregation than the one he is about to take like finding the actual perpetrator. And because we can think of those we believe his actions to be morally wrong?

So basically John Stuart Mil was wrong not Jeremy Banthem

The sheriff example can be reframed in the train bypass example: a train is fast approaching and you have control of a rail switch to send it in a bypass. There is a work gang with 10 guys busy working on the rails and they are gonna be smashed to pieces by the train. In the bypass there is a busy worker named John who is the nicest person with a family and two young babies. If you throw the switch the train will detour and you save the lives of those 10 guys, but of course John will have a horrible death and his family will grieve in sudden misery. If you do nothing then John is spared to come home to his family, but those 10 wretches will die. What to do, the greater good and a terrible execution of a good person?

All arguments against utilitarianism are based on utilitarianism does not cause the greatest happiness of the greatest number which is a utilitarian argument, JSM right again !

Innocent guy in the frame is arguably more innocent than the many rioters who were harmed in the riot they attended. ...or whatever.

Reminds me of Orson Welle's character. in Touch of Evil - "I never framed an innocent man."

The problem comes down to the values assigned to each party. One can assign a value to the pain and suffering that the person to be framed that’s vastly larger than the value assigned to the pain and suffering caused by the riot. In that case, framing the person is actually the immoral thing to do. Dilemma solved.

I don't think utilitarianism will tell you what is right or wrong but rather what will amount to the greatest amount of pleasure minus pain. In the scenario i do believe that framing the innocent person is correct, as if you don't hundreds of other innocent people would die. This scenario is almost like a disguised trolley problem.

Surely the reliability of the information is an important factor here. If this happened in the real world, it would be reasonable to doubt the claim that the sheriff was certain about the riot and its outcome. If it was possible to be absolutely certain - the sheriff is a time traveler sent back to save the future - then framing the man is the right thing to do. But when outcomes are uncertain, our moral intuition is likely correct that the sheriff should look for a different solution. The problem with utilitarianism is the potential for abuse when outcomes are not entirely predictable.

Aggregation works properly in this example, if it is done right. What the argument omits, is the original perpetrator, who might repeat the crime, if left to get away with the first one. This would add a new victim and another possible riot to the attempt of avoiding the first one. Having riot on both sides of the argument and at least one additional victim at the side of killing innocent, the example actually suggests preserving of the innocent life in face of riot, regardless of convincing abilities in the person of the sheriff.

Due to the imperfect nature of the human condition, i will always remain skeptical of any moral laws. if there are universal moral laws, would humans have the capacity to actually apply them appropriately? Even in cases where the moral tenants remain simple(like the ten commandments of the bible or other religious doctrine) i consistently see the biases of the human brain seeping through. I endorse utilitarianism because i believe in its usefulness as a guideline but i would not dare state it as an end all be all to every moral problem.

One question that I have is, how do we decide that the sheriff framing the innocent person is wrong? For this we need to know right/wrong or good/bad which is what the utilitarian framework is doing (based on the subsection of hedonism). So the 'biting the bullet' part doesn't seem relevant as that is anyway the right choice to be made in this framework. If you say that this action would be wrong or bad based on our intuitions, then that seems to already assume emotivism (or a similar framework where morals are formed from intuitions). P.S. - I do not know enough about the arguments supporting utilitarianism yet, the 3 sub sections that you explained in the 1st video were not justified to me (hedonism had some justification but still needs to hold up more to counters), so I am not saying that this would be a morally good outcome, just that we would need some assumptions to decide the good outcome here as we do not have justified axiomatic definitions of good/bad already built up in this course.

It's a false dichotomy, based on a poisoned premise. Interesting thought experiment though. Your presentations are very good.

I think a deeper critique lies in the framing of this scenario. Utilitarianism essentially maintains the status quo to feed the hedonist drives of a hegemony - by always concerning oneself with the immediate violence of social upheaval, the institutional violence inherent to a society goes unaddressed. Utilitarianism is inherently anti-justice.

There are many examples throughout history where innocent people were predictably harmed by the pursuit of noble goals. Almost no progress ever hadn't at least some victim's. And I am absolutely certain that there are such cases in the history of mankind that were morally permissable.

The way I would look at it, if the man is framed then the riots don’t take place suffering would be minimal, but if the man is not framed and the society does riot the consequence is no fault of the sharifs because the society is completely to blame for there own actions. What one chooses is never the fault of another unless forced.

But in the long term, justice is what leads to a well functioning society, where doing the wrong thing is not incentivized. So i think it is only a short term view of utilitarianism that says that framing the innocent man leads to a higher net amount of happiness,

12:06 Doesn't this attempt to rescue the utilitarian principle presupposes a different principle itself, a principle that is different from the utilitarian principle? You'd have to assume, that the truth will lead to the good, and since the good for the utilitarian is the useful, you'd have to assume that the truth will lead to the useful. That's prima facie improbable, I'd say, but it'd be a very different principle than the utilitarian principle. That would mean, that the moral principle of the utilitarian ethics wouldn't be the principle of utility.

This Sheriff counterexample is not a counterexample at all... We could simply argue that there is nothing wrong with killing an innocent man. In the same way that we could say it is an alienation to consider cheating on you wife as bad, we could say that killing an innocent man is not bad.

This is the word-problem equivalent of statistics derived from integral calculus. And you know about Disraeli-Twain statistics, right?

Isn’t this just another way of stating the trolley problem? You see 4 people are gonna die if you don’t take action to divert the train to kill 1? All people involved are innocent. What would be more interesting would be how to chose who to frame.

Its a false dichotomy, but its the trolley problem. There would obviously be alternatives in the timescale to avoid the riot or protect better etc. But lets assume its the trolley problem and its an urgent 5s or less decision to make. I think most of us there end up agreeing with smart. 1 innocent is worth less than the lives of many innocent.

What if I think we live in a relativistic universe and thus it can be morally right or wrong depending on the specifics..?

You can go back in time and prevent ww1 , ww2 , and all other wars, conflicts etc since then But what you need todo includes unaliving Hitlers mom while she's 12( she's innocent) What will you choose? What will you do?

Which is why it is an immoral action. This is the same line of thinking that was used in the George Floyd case. People threatened that they would riot if Derek Chauvin was acquitted of the murder charges against him, regardless of whether or not what he did actually justified the conviction he was given. Is it really moral to just convict someone of something regardless of whether or not they actually did it just because people threaten to riot? The utilitarian would say yes because they don't care about what actually happened. They don't care about whether or not Chauvin actually killed anybody nor do they care about what happens to him. As if his life and future don't matter. Seems pretty heartless and cruel to me

I would like to see the math involved in the Sheriff scenario. What if the Utilitarian were to say that framing the innocent man would produce more pain than a hundred dead rioters?

The truly utilitarian action should be that the Sheriff frames himself.

Sheriff example sounds a lot like a Trolley Dilemma. Framing an innocent person is Denontolgicaly wrong. It violates the duty of the sherriff. Example , counter example ,counter example to the counter example. If he can get away with it it is right. If he can't it is wrong. The problem is that you don't "know" if you can. You do know the consequences if you do get caught will be worse than those if you hadn't. 🤔

i guess another example on this is the story of "those who walk away from omelas" or the star trek episode: "Lift us where the suffering cannot reach"

Maybe the thing is that it isn't for sure in practice that all those people will die in a riot. If you would know for REAL, framing that person would feel more just.

I don’t see how it’s possible to know for CERTAIN that hundreds of people will die in the riots. It’s best to act morally in the moment.

Damn it seems like humans all think the same because smarts response 2 ideas and response was exactly mine.

I would say the utilitarian argument that it's correct to frame the man is right in principal, however in practice it's almost never going to be the actual solution to stopping the riots. So yes in this absurd situation which was carefully crafted to make the utilitarian choice *seem* wrong, the utilitarian choice *seems* wrong, however it *would* be the morally correct choice given the set-up about it being the only solution is true. That's the big problem I have with utilitarianism and anti-utilitarianism arguments: in real life people don't have perfect knowledge of the consequences of their actions, therefore it's very easy to construct arguments that make utilitarianism *seem* wrong or *seem* right, but aren't practical solutions and don't translate easily to real life scenarios.

The framing scenario is just a politically intriguing version of the trolley problem. If the guy doing the framing has perfect omniscience and knows the pros outweigh the cons, the framing is justified. Like the trolley problem it's an unrealistic scenario that will never happen.

Not sure if this idea has been raised in the three years since this video was posted, but the first comeback I would make to the counterexample given is not to remind the court how bad it would be to allow a riot to occur, but to point to _how bad it would be to execute an innocent person_ : It's not just that that person lost their life (because of course many innocents would die in the riots), but also that *The Man would be responsible* - it's worse for a government to knowingly murder an innocent than for an innocent to lose their life in a riot. How much worse? I'm not sure. I suppose one might construct the hypothetical scenario so that there would be enough innocent loss of life in the riots to outstrip the single government-sanctioned murder, but in terms of practicality, that moves further and further from what seems plausible. Claiming an innocent scapegoat feels like a bridge too far, given any reasonable alternative.

If you have a need for morality, intentionally framing an innocent person is going to cause you terrible emotional damage. So if the sheriff in this example framed an innocent person, he wouldn't have only caused suffering to the innocent person but also to himself. So here you have to decide what is the potential of this sheriff in the long term. Is it worth it that he causes himself harm to save 100 other people? If he is a very high value person with high potential and the 100 people are not, it is not worth it. If he is a low value person and the 100 people are high value it is worth it. However, at the end of the day people will always look out for themselves. So even though the utilitarian theory would dictate that a low value sheriff and a low value innocent person should suffer so that 100 high or low value people are saved, this would almost never happen in real life. Why not? Because people aren't capable of intentionally causing themselves so much suffering. Imagine having to live the rest of your life knowing that you destroyed an innocent person's life and you can't even let the 100 people know that you saved them because you would probably be thrown in jail after the news would spread. And now imagine that you would have to keep doing these utilitarian acts all the time! Constantly destroying innocent people's lives so that a higher number of people are saved. If you are a regular person and not a psychopath with no moral feeling it would drive you completely insane. For this reason, utilitarianism completely fails as a philosophy because it is impossible to use in practice. It doesn't respect people's innate need for morality and tries to override it with a new and updated version of morality that is however highly abstract and therefore impossible to follow. In theory, utilitarianism is the best moral philosophy ever. In practice, it completely fails because it doesn't respect how human psychology works.

Final statement is incorrect. Framing innocent people by law enforcement can undermine the very fabric that holds society together thus leading to overall more damage overtime vs the damage from the riots. Utilitarianism can still apply, even with the sheriff's example if you better tune oversight of the situation. Typical issue with short run vs long run issues. The real flaw with utilitarianism is that the future and outcomes are unknown, so how do you base decisions on the unknown?

You can find singular exeptions, but can you find consistent exeptions? How often would framing an innocent man prevent a riot? How often is the sheriff such a good liar? This particular case might prevent a riot, but regular use of this tactic would erode the community's faith in the justice system. A larger set of data would likely point away from its utility. My ethical model is to use patterns of consequence to set standards of virtue.

Sheriff takes the fall instead of arresting an innocent victim.

I disagree with aggregationism, but I think this is a pretty poor counterexample.

This reminds me of that part in Kingdom of Heaven about doing a lesser evil to achieve a greater good.

The problem is not utilitarianism, but the moral mathematics used. It counts person’s life as an object. Hence the answer: 100 > 1. But what if you count person’s life as infinity. In that case both scenarios are equal, which means sherif should be indifferent and make lowest effort choice, which is not to frame innocent person.

but the utilitarian belief of what to do is obviously the right option? this is literally just the trolley problem, obviously it's morally necessary to kill one guy to make sure that over a hundred people don't die idk why anyone would even disagree at all

So if the theory is wrong let the roit happen according to the example, but what will a non-util do in that situation? Neither! The example is against util and non-util! According to the util and non util the best to do would be to solve the problem in a 3rd way, or will a non util let roit happen, such a fixed example can't exist in real life, the more variables we consider the util will keep adding those factors and still produce the best outcome, util can't be falsified, it's a problem with the very example nor the util or non-util will choose to do neither of them, riot or kill innocent is not a realistic option. If we let a non util choose they'll let the riot happen, but the uncertainty of riot happening and the more lives at stake are ignored by them so a lotta ppl will die than 1. If we stick strictly with that unrealistic example one death is better, but if I add variables like educating the ppl, proving them not guilty, educating the crowd on what happened, avoiding such further instances would be the best outcome.

We cannot reject a moral claim made on the basis of one moral theory by claiming that it is inconsistent with another moral claim that is not made on the basis of a moral theory. We do not know that it is wrong to frame an innocent man; we can only *derive* this from a preferred moral theory. As for the aggregation problem, we do not know the precise units of happiness that correspond to either element; this is necessarily ambiguous and so will depend on whether we start by giving a higher value to the pain felt by the hanged man or the please felt by each of the remaining citizens. We cannot assume that one unit of pain equals one unit of pleasure, because we do not have access to the precise feeling (the qualia) of the people involved.

But didn't the innocent people give up their innocence by rioting? Therefore if an innocent man wasn't framed and a riot did in-sue, the innocent rioters wouldn't actually be innocent. But the innocent man would have stayed innocent.

This example expertly shows how pointless these moral thought experiments are. Why are we holding the sheriff to a high moral standard but not the townspeople? According to utilitarianism, and other moral theories, it is morally wrong to kill innocent people in a riot. In a world where ethics are governed by utilitarianism, the people would not riot. This is just a worse version of the trolley problem.

Whole argument is invalid because it assumes that there are no other options and artificially forces us to select between two bad options which is never the case in the real world situations where we can always create new options. It also assumes that we can quantify pleasure and pain and that utilitarianism can be used universally in all possible situations instead of merely being useful tool in some circumstances just like all other moral theories.

This example is very limited in that it assumes the individuals involved are not smart enough to come up with a second, third or fourth option that would be fair to everyone. Like calling in an external sheriff to escort the individual out of town for a trial after which a guilty verdict will result in the individual being hanged. This is just one example... another example is to fake the execution, another example is to actually prove the individual that was guilty to be guilty... many many other possibilities.

I would say that yes framing a person is a terrible thing but also having a riot where a bunch of people die is considerably worse.

This is the plot of high noon btw

The solution is to teach utilitarianism to the mob so they won't riot (because it would cause too much pain)

5:25

The Sheriff asks the innocent man. Utilitarianism works best with sufficient information and knowledge of truth and that does not only go for the misled potential rioters. The man IS innocent. But he can still be given the choice to act as a utilitarian himself and save many lives (insert finale of a crime show where the Sheriff releases secretly filmed footage to the public of the innocent man, upon being explained the reality of the situation he finds himself in the middle of, agreeing to give his life freely to save the hundreds that would surely die... information - knowledge - truth - no one fucking dies).

I've been thinking about Utilitarianism v Moral imperative. And I think Kant is right that if something is bad, it's bad in all situations. Like, even if you could save a life by lying to someone, that's still a worse result than convincing them without lying. It's too easy to justify bad behavior that way. Making room for incompetence, fatigue, ignorance etc, we might say that someone who doesn't know how to stop a riot without framing an innocent person might be justified in doing so, but we shouldn't ever say that action was "good".

Its not moral to frame an innocent man, no matter how awful the masses behave. Pilot knew this when he washed his hands of what the Jewish Pharisees were demanding when they executed Jesus.

This is where utilitarianism meets stalinism and capitalism: sacrifice a minority of innocent people for the "common good".

I don't think this is a good example because youre counterargument basically states: "it looks bad therefore it is bad" Utilitarianism doesnt account for emotions just the minumim of human suffering

Since we've been discussing every moral value in terms of pleasure and pain, how is death painful? I don't believe it is painful at all to the person experiencing it.

In order for utilitarianism to work you need to possess omniscience. Which begs the question does God exist.

I've feel that utilitarianism is the functional moral theory for most sociopaths.

If the sheriff is so good at framing someone he could probably just as easily pull off a fake execution

I think a better example would be if you have the same number of death's in each case but who dies was different. For example, if you have 2 men, of the same age. Lets say one of the men, call him man A, plots to kill the other (man B) in secret. And lets say the sheriff knows about it and can kill that man. Now lets say that the sheriff knows for 100% that if he doesn't kill man A, man B will die, but no one else. Man A only has the intent of killing person B, and if he gets away with it, won't kill anyone else. Perhaps he will feel guilty and won't want to kill anyone else. And because this is in secret, it's not like people will know about it and say to themselves "I'll be able to get away with it!". Now here is the question. Will it matter if the sheriff kills man A to stop him from killing man B? Either way, 1 person dies. So why should he stop man A, according to utilitarianism?

Ultimately, this appears to just come down to an example of a necessary evil. The question then becomes is there ever a necessary evil that you must do for a greater good? The specifics of the example don't really matter. And the simple truth is, that as finite beings there will always be cases where an evil is necessary to achieve a greater good. And if you want the ultimate simplest version of this to realise that: Locking people up, taking away their freedom, appears to not be good. It appears to be just like kidnapping. But what if they have committed a serious crime, and are likely to do it again? Does taking away their freedom (or in the extreme case, their life) become acceptable if it is done to achieve the greater good of protecting people? In fact, the "Sheriff" counter example remains the same if you take away it being an innocent person. It just means it doesn't have the emotional appeal, as if they have done something bad people are happy to punish them.

To paraphrase the great and influential character Professor Hugh Akston, formerly of Patrick Henry University, when you find yourself unable to resolve a paradox, go back and reassess the basic premises. And to borrow from Disraeli-Twain Statistics “There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics,” the entire subject of “utilitarianism,” based on consequentialism which is in turn based on aggregationalism is the word-problem equivalent of integral calculus -- or of meta-analysis -- using mathematics mis-applied to social situations: it is fraught with hazard and mis-representation, missing entire dimensions, with the potential for the governing authority to slide into despotism and attribute arbitrary decisions to algorithm, not to sanity or goodness. Watch what is happening in government healthcare. “I’m just following orders.” A simple understanding of ethics is the knowledge and application of rules based on morals, applied to social situations. A simple description of morals is that they come from something Greater (that capital G is deliberate) and are applied broadly across society, though often obstructed or mutated passing through public and social institutions. Utilitarianism sounds much too much like democracy, or more precisely, mob rule. The Pol (of either side or school) convinces the majority to do what he tells them is best for them. They believe it and they support him so therefor it must be true; a tautology of circular reasoning. It can - has-become completely unbalanced. It rather resembles the Roman concept of fascism. Human assessment, even using a nice name for “mob rule,” is naturally imperfect. And unintended consequences - imponderables -- are the rule rather than the exception. Now to the counterexample. First of all, taking an innocent life - knowingly, no matter how cunning or skilled or self-righteous -- is simply wrong. That rationalized death will shortly be a fait accompli, while the probability of a riot is still in the unknowable future. Doing so is not merely uncomfortable, it is unconscionable. In the Torah, it commands since antiquity Thou Shalt not Kill. The deliberate murder-execution of an innocent man as scapegoat or sacrifice to appease the gods is an abomination. You know, perhaps ask the man if he is willing to sacrifice his life and let the public know it if he agrees. Then it is on their hands. Sound familiar? If not, the rule of law must be upheld; the public safety is the responsibility of the elected authority. It’s their job. Killing an innocent human is not. Remember, the real criminal is still out there. Look what happened to Jesus as a trade for Barabbas, and look what the Greek Oligarchy did to Socrates in the name of maintaining public order. Our present society has many flaws and has made many errors, but fortunately we are trying to find solutions heading toward the protection of all groups and individuals; yes, we are a long way away. One closing thought -- and there is so much more that can be said about this provocative concept -- is that over the long term the easy way out rarely leads to better conditions; it takes work to become a better, changed person, and it is up to each and every one of us to become the change we want to see in the world. Seek not reality; seek only to have no opinion. -- Zen Mondo.

Interesting that, when discussing Utilitarianism, you never use the phrase, "the greatest good for the greatest number," which is how it was explained to me as a child; and best expresses its essence. Also interesting that you omit mention of the fact that Utilitarianism has been an essential component of the most murderous and destructive political philosophies of the modern era, most notably, Marxism-Leninism and its descendants. You claim that a "general statement" can be "disproven" by a single instance of inconsistency, or by a single exception. Please define your terms. Most understand "general statement" to be synonymous with "generalization," not with "categorical statement," for example. Generalizations definitionally entail exceptions. Also interesting that you do not contrast Utilitarianism with the concept of "Intrinsic Good" and "Intrinsic Evil," notwithstanding the inescapable suggestion of the concept by the question of the action of the sheriff.

First of all, this is the plot of To Kill a Mocking Bird. 7:05 It doesn't. This problem really boils down to the innocence of the rioters. If guilt was the only reasonable conclusion, then the question is kill 1 innocent person or hundreds? If they could have known better had they tried then they are not innocent. This does not mean they deserve death, just that actions have consequences. This assertion is backed by utilitarianism because the time frame isn't just right now. The calculation should account for the norm. Arbitrarily choosing that specific frame is ignoring the larger picture of what creates a good society. Also, you're a great presenter but don't tell the viewer what to think directly. It goes against the critical thinking you're trying to cause.

I think this scenario is convoluted, to its own detriment. The innocent man has basically the same information as the sheriff, especially regarding his own innocence. So the innocent man himself should also find that his being executed is a moral necessity. Rather than the sheriff imposing this on the innocent, the innocent man should come to the sheriff and say, "please execute me even though I'm innocent, because it will save lives." Self-sacrifice as a moral good is much less counterintuitive than the sacrifice of another as a moral good. Now, you could restructure the scenario so it lacks this element, but then I think you'd turn it into the trolley problem. Not that I think the trolley problem is trivial! But my point is that this sheriff scenario just seems like a strictly less interesting version of it.

jack bauer would hang the innocent man himself

Framing the innocent person is obviously the right thing to do if literally hundreds will die if he is not framed. But that is a weird example. Suely the sheriff could present the mob with the cast-iron evidence he had of the man's innocence.

"Suppose a situation exists" is NOT a counter example. A counter example must actually exist.