nozicksmememachine

[nozicksmememachine]

A reference to the ‘sadistic guards’ issue in utilitarianism. This problem includes five prison guards who all take pleasure from inflicting abuse on a prisoner. Philosopher Jeremy Bentham would claim that, despite the explicit sadism, this action of aggression is morally right because there are more people gaining pleasure in the scenario (5) than the amount of people in pain (1). This is because Bentham believed in quantitative hedonism, meaning that maximising pleasure for the majority of individuals is the right thing to do.