Instruction
** Due after 10 hours
For this assignment, please read the following three scenarios, and for each scenario, answer the following three questions:
What would a utilitarian choose to do?
What would a deontologist choose to do?
What would you do?
Scenario 1: You are a prisoner in a camp along with seven of your friends. Your days are spent doing manual labor around the camp, and you are fed, albeit small portions, at least once a day. You are also given water, a blanketsso treatment isn't terrible. One day, you find that sadistic guard has lined up your friends outside of your cell. He hands you a gun and gives you an ultimatum: either you shoot one of the seven he has lined up, or he will shoot all of them, but not you. The question is whether you should take the gun from the guard, and follow his command, shooting on of your friends.
Scenario 2: You are on a caving trip on the coast, and you are leaving the cave system when your guide, a pregnant woman, get stuck at the exit. High tide is coming, and if you don't get out of the cave system quickly, you will be caught and drown along with the other people on your trip. Someone you are with happens to have a stick of dynamite. If you use the dynamite near the exit where the pregnant woman is stuck, she will die in the explosion, but the rest of you will escape the cave instead of drowning. The question is whether to use the dynamite.
Scenario 3: You are the father of a young girl. One day she is raped by your neighbor. There is an investigation, but not enough evidence can be presented to convict or arrest him. You move away from your house and try to restart your life with your family, but your daughter is clearly damaged from her traumatic experience at the hand of your neighbor. Months later, you are out one night at a restaurant with your spouse when you see the neighbor who raped your daughter. You quickly leave after your meal. Days later you find out that the neighbors wife has been murdered, and the neighbor is the prime suspect. At first you are happy that he will be convicted and sent to prisonafter all he wasn't convicted for your daughter's rape. However, you notice that his wife was murdered at the same time you saw him days earlier in the restaurant. The question is whether you speak up and provide him a truthful alibi, or you say nothing, and see him go to jail, and his wife's killer free.