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Eddie Fu
Professor Mazza
Problems of Philosophy
1 December 2020
Self-Driving Cars and Hedonistic Act-Utilitarianism
To begin with, in order to understand hedonistic act-utilitarianism, we must first examine
hedonism and act-utilitarianism separately. Hedonism is the idea that only sees obtaining
pleasure and avoiding pain as essential components for personal well-being. To hedonists, joy
and pleasure, as well as pain and suffering are intrinsic goods and bads, other things that produce
pleasure or suffering are instrumental goods and bads. Act-utilitarianism is evaluating an action’s
net utility(net well-being) before committing to it. If an option creates more net utility than
another, we should proceed with that action even if it goes against our morals or societal norms.
Combining the two terms together, hedonistic act-utilitarianism means we should always commit
to the act that produces the most net pleasure in order to yield the maximum amount of pleasure.
In the given prompt, in order to avoid an accident that may result in multiple deaths, a
self-driving car is faced with two different options as there is no time to hit the brakes: turning
onto the sidewalks, driving into a pedestrian and likely killing him/her, or drive into a wall in
order to avoid hitting the pedestrian but the driver is likely to die in the process. Under hedonistic
act-utilitarian ideals, the self-driving cars would be equipped with powerful enough computers
and algorithms that enable them to assess their surroundings and predict the net pleasure
generated by each of their options, and always proceed with the option that maximizes net
pleasure in the process. This is because hedonistic act-utilitarianism’s sole focus is on producing
the most amount of net pleasure, so there are no absolute rules or moral code etc that have to be
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adhered to all the time, and in this case, the scenario presented in the prompt is no difference. For
example, if the pedestrian on the sidewalk was a researcher at Johns Hopkins University, who is
about to finish the last step on creating a cure to cancer, and the driver inside the self-driving
vehicle is a crack addict, then according to hedonistic act-utilitarianism, it would only make
sense to drive into the wall so the pedestrian remains unharmed, later finishing the cure to
cancer, producing an immense amount of pleasure and happiness countering the amount of pain
in the crack addict’s death. If the roles were reversed, the computer would choose to hit the
pedestrian instead, showing that there are no absolute rules to follow in hedonistic
act-utilitarianism except achieving the most amount of pleasure/least amount of suffering.
In my opinion, the hedonistic act-utilitarianism response is not the correct ethical
response to this type of situation due to two reasons. First of all, hedonistic act-utilitarianism
takes away the emphasis on traditional moral codes. Even though I do not agree with the idea
that rules should be absolute and there should still be exceptions, as a society, there are still
general rules to follow. However, hedonistic act-utilitarianism only sees the world in terms of
pleasure and happiness. In the prompt given, if somehow the option which yields the most net
happiness is to drive into the two fully packed cars in front of the self-driving car, under
hedonistic act-utilitarianism, despite that more than a dozen people were murdered, the action
was more than acceptable because it produced the most pleasure. This is simply unimaginable in
the world we live in today and would be denounced and condemned, but in the perspective of
hedonistic act-utilitarianism, the action would be normalized and praised. Second of all, the
choices made under hedonistic act-utilitarianism are merely predictions, and it is certainly
possible that the pleasure generated differs from them. For example, if the researcher fails to
develop the cure to cancer and later would commit suicide, the pleasure generated from that
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particular outcome is different compared to the outcome when a cure to cancer is succesfully
developed. Humans should not be measured only in terms of pleasure and pain, and I sincerely
hope that technology advances in the future are able to come up with a better solution than the
hedonistic act-utilitarian approach.