The Lonesome Stranger and Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism and the Lonesome Stranger

Utilitarianism is the ethical theory that believes one should do what will promote the greatest utility for as many people as possible, that utility is often considered to be happiness or pleasure. There are different kinds of utilitarian views; hedonistic, preference, rule, and act to name a few, but they all have the same main objective. This theory does indeed seem good at first, but it is flawed. The case of the lonesome stranger challenges utilitarianism by bringing up issues of justice in different kinds of utilitarianism. The lonesome stranger is a persuasive argument to utilitarianism, showing problems pertaining to justice.

The lonesome stranger is hypothetical story about a malicious murder in a town. The Sheriff has discovered beyond a reasonable doubt that the murder is dead. The townspeople want the murder executed, and the sheriff knows that they won't believe the murder is dead. Riots and looting are inevitable, but then walks in a lonesome stranger who tells the sheriff he has no friends or family, and came to the town for no real reason. The sheriff then gets the idea of framing the stranger. If done right, the townspeople would never know, and there would be peace. What would the utilitarian do? There are a few different types of utilitarianism, and they all answer the problem a little differently.

Hedonistic utilitarianism focuses on pleasure as the utility, so hedonistic utilitarianism tries to maximize pleasure and minimize pain for the greatest number of people. So the obvious answer to the problem of the lonesome stranger would be to frame the stranger. The reasoning would be that if you framed a stranger with no family or friends, you only be causing pain for the stranger, yet making the townspeople happy and safer. This scenario would maximize pleasure and minimize pain, but there's something wrong. While I agree it would be a good thing to make the townspeople happier and safer, but what about justice? It seems that the townspeople want justice for what happened to their neighbor. It is certainly an injustice to frame and execute a stranger for a crime he didn't commit. It seems utilitarianism has forgotten about justice. Utilitarianism then points to a different point of view, preference utilitarianism.

Preference utilitarianism focuses on having preferences satisfied, so it tries to satisfy the greatest number of people's preferences. Answering the problem of the lonesome stranger for the preference utilitarian is more complicated. The sheriff would then base his decision on the townspeople preferences. If the overall preference of the townspeople is to not punish the innocent, then the answer would be not to frame him. If the townspeople didn't care about the innocent and had a preference to safety and peace of mind, then the answer would be to frame him. Now this seems ok, most places would have a preference to not punishing the innocent. Imagine the town is a mob hideout, and all the townspeople are in the mafia, and do all the illegal things associated with it. It seems reasonable that they wouldn't have a preference to not punish innocent people. In this town the sheriff would frame the stranger, but is it right? There is still a conflict with justice; utilitarianism then says it's not the utility itself, but how it's applied.

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