Justice ~ #2b ~ How to Measure Pleasure

To answer these questions, view the first half of Harvard University's video:  Episode 2, Part 2, starting at 24:12.

How are we supposed to figure out what to do in a particular, real-life situation?  Suppose that we have to choose between building a new sports stadium and building a new hospital.  According to Bentham, we should consider how much pleasure sports fans would get if we were to build a new stadium, and how much pain sick people would be relieved of if we were to build a new hospital.  If building the stadium would produce a greater balance of pleasure, then we should build the stadium.

1.  Is it true that happiness is simply pleasure and the absence of pain, and that the goal of all human action should be pleasure?  Or is utilitarianism too crude as a moral doctrine?

2.  Are all goods commensurable?  Can they all be weighed on a common scale, or is it possible that the value of some goods, such as love, cannot coherently be balanced against the value of other goods, like money?  Is this a fatal problem for utilitarianism?

3.  Does utilitarianism threaten individual rights?  John Stuart Mill believed that protecting individual rights is the best way to increase the sum of happiness in the long run.  Was Mill right?  Either way, is this really the reason why we should not violate people’s basic rights?

Justice ~ #2a ~ Putting a Price Tag on Life

To answer these questions, view the first half of Harvard University's video:  Episode 2, Part 1.

According to the principle of utility, we should always do whatever will produce the greatest amount of happiness and whatever is necessary to prevent the greatest amount of unhappiness.

1.  There are times when the only way to prevent harm to a large number of people is to harm a smaller number of people.  Is it always permissible to harm a smaller number in order to prevent harm to a large number?

2.  Ten thousand innocent civilians live next to a munitions factory in a country at war.  If you bomb the factory, all of them will die.  If you don’t bomb the factory, it will be used to produce bombs that will be dropped on fifty thousand innocent civilians in another country.  What’s the right thing to do?

Justice ~ #1b ~ The Case for Cannibalism

To answer these questions, view the first half of Harvard University's video:  Episode 1, Part 2, starting at 24:15.

Sandel introduces the principles of utilitarian philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, with a famous nineteenth century law case involving a shipwrecked crew of four.  After nineteen days lost at sea, the captain decides to kill the cabin boy, the weakest among them, so they can feed on his blood and body to survive.  That was an actual case, but think about today:  Suppose four shipwrecked sailors are stranded at sea, without food or water.  Would it be wrong for three of them to kill and eat the weakest one, in order to save their own lives?

Justice ~ #1a ~ The Moral Side of Murder

To answer these questions, view the first half of Harvard University's video:  Episode 1, Part 1.

If you had to choose between (1) killing one person to save the lives of five others and (2) doing nothing, even though you knew that five people would die right before your eyes if you did nothing — what would you do?  What would be the right thing to do?  That’s the hypothetical scenario Professor Michael Sandel uses to launch his course on moral reasoning.

Justice ~ by Michael J. Sandel

Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? ~ by Michael J. Sandel, 2009

What are our obligations to others as people in a free society?  Is it sometimes wrong to tell the truth?  Is it possible, or desirable, to legislate morality? Is killing sometimes morally required?  Do individual rights and the common good conflict?  Should government tax the rich to help the poor?  Is the free market fair?  Michael J. Sandel’s “Justice” course is one of the most popular and influential at Harvard.

"Justice" is one of the most popular courses in Harvard’s history.  Harvard has opened its classroom to the world.  Professor Michael Sandel challenges us with difficult moral dilemmas and asks our opinion about the right thing to do.  He then asks us to examine our answers in the light of new scenarios.  The results are often surprising, revealing that important moral questions are never black and white.   This course also addresses the hot topics of our day — affirmative action, same-sex marriage, patriotism and rights, torture, stealing a drug that your child needs to survive.  Notice that each of these twelve classes has two topics, which we'll discuss separately.

Harvard class videos
Harvard assigned readings
About the author

Harvard faculty page
Wikipedia

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1a ~ The Moral Side of Murder
1b ~ The Case for Cannibalism
2a ~ Putting a Price Tag on Life
2b ~ How to Measure Pleasure
3a ~ Free to Choose
3b ~ Who Owns Me?
4a ~ This Land is my Land
4b ~ Consenting Adults
5a ~ Hired Guns?
5b ~ Motherhood: For Sale
6a ~ Mind Your Motive
6b ~ The Supreme Principle of Morality
7a ~ A Lesson in Lying
7b ~ A Deal is a Deal
8a ~ What's a Fair Start?
8b ~ What Do We Deserve?
9a ~ Arguing Affirmative Action
9b ~ What's the Purpose?
10a ~ The Good Citizen
10b ~ Freedom vs. Fit
11a ~ The Claims of Community
11b ~ Where Our Loyalty Lies
12a ~ Debating Same-sex Marriage
12b ~ The Good Life



You are welcome to watch Harvard's video, do the readings they provide (not all episodes have related readings), and come here to see what's being said.  You can answer earlier questions as well as the current one.

Here's your first question:   Does morality interest you enough that you'll join us in exploring the ideas?  (Answer this one in the comments below.)

FB ~ final quote and book question

Prepared by Mary/Zorro

Catalina Trail at Butterfly Family Fun Day at the Bullock Museum. She was featured on the cover of the August 1976 National Geographic after the discovery of the monarch butterflies migration retreat in Mexico.  She said, "I am the only living member of the team who discovered the Monarch Butterfly overwintering sanctuaries in Mexico in 1975."

Mary says, "I can't find the source of this quote":

"The novel is structured in a way that makes the reader realize that all the things we do without considering the future have grave consequences — from the personal (smoking, sex) to the global (climate change).    We may realize it's human nature to make a mistake and stay the course in much smaller ways (such as Dellarobia's unplanned pregnancy and unhappy marriage).

"This theme makes the flood at the end a very fitting way to end the novel. It's easy to see how we've failed to correct our path towards climate change when all the small changes Dellarobia made in her life won't matter unless we make the most important changes with respect to the environment."

In a comment (below), she asks, "What do you all think about the book as a whole?"

FB ~ themes

Prepared by Mary/Zorro

Flight Behavior interweaves important themes:  religion and science, poverty and wealth, education and instinct or faith, intolerance and acceptance.   How are these themes used to complement each other, and how do they conflict?