The 1999 film The Insider is one that deals with a man trying to make the toughest decision of his life as it pertains to the safety of his family as well as the well being of the entire country. While the movie is plenty interesting in its own right, the dilemma the man faces becomes much more interesting, and debatable, when you look at it in terms of utilitarianism and its different branches. In short, the film delves into the life of a former corporate scientist for one of the biggest tobacco companies in the United States.
Obviously, as a corporate scientist, the man knows the ins and outs of the tobacco industry, as well as the negative side effects of tobacco (which were unclear to the public at the time). When the man decides to participate in an expose on the negative impact of tobacco usage, he and his family begin to be threatened and followed. At this point, he has to face a very difficult decision; either back off entirely and assure his family’s safety, or follow through and potentially change the future of U. S. health regulation.
The man eventually becomes obsessed with outing the darkest secrets of “big tobacco” and does everything he can to get his knowledge out into the world. However, this causes his family life to spiral downward. Eventually, his wife cannot take the media storm and the threat of danger, and leaves him. He stands by his decision, however, and eventually gets all of his knowledge across to the public. Now, the question of whether or not he made the right decision would depend on which theory you consulted. In terms of utilitarianism, there is no immediate right answer.
The argument could even be made that an act utilitarian and a rule utilitarian would give the man different advice. So an act utilitarian is one that evaluates an action based on its individual effects; that is to say, they would perform an action if that specific circumstance would lead to more aggregate pleasure than pain. So in this situation, you would be required to try and quantify the aggregate pleasure and pain of the decision. On one hand, there would be potential for plenty of pleasure to be gained.
If the man releases his knowledge, it could lead to health regulations and reforms, potentially saving thousands of lives and helping to avoid thousands more cases of cancer. However, there is also the chance that he would follow through, but his word would not have much of a social or political impact, and there would be very little aggregate pleasure. The same seems to hold true for the pain aspect. Potentially, the man’s decision would have a negative impact on the entire tobacco industry and all of its workers, as well as people that would be opposed to tobacco regulation.
Again, the magnitude of this would be dependent on the sociopolitical relevance of the expose. The man’s family woes, however, would not be dependent on that, as his wife essentially gave him an ultimatum that following through with his plans would cost him his family. This leads us to wonder whether an act utilitarian has a way to factor probability of pain and pleasure into their calculation. Assuming they do, in order to make his decision, the man would have to calculate the probability of both the positive and negative outcomes, and multiply them by the aggregate utility (or disutility) they would respectively create.
In this situation, the man would have to assume that there was a very small chance that his expose would actually make the enormous impact he was hoping for, but he would also have to account for the vast utility he could potentially promote if it did. However, in real life situations, it is virtually impossible to assign realistic numerical values to these situations, so weighing these decisions becomes a very arbitrary process.
Therefore, I believe pragmatic act utilitarian would advise the man to act on the assured quantities of pleasure and pain, and in this case, the only assured thing that would come from following through would be the pain of the man’s family leaving him. Not going public would guarantee the future utility of his family relationships, and would therefore be his obligation in the view of an act utilitarian. On the other hand, a rule utilitarian would think of the situation in different terms. A rule utilitarian is one that looks at the general value of a type of action, and judges based on the pleasure and pain it typically causes.
In this situation, I think the “type of action” at play would be “attempting to benefit the general public”. Quite obviously, “attempting to benefit the general public” is going to produce more pleasure than pain a majority of the time, and for that simple reason, a rule utilitarian would insist that the man release his information, no matter the consequences in his specific situation. While it could be argued that the man’s actions would fall under several different categories that would be judged differently by a rule utilitarian, in actuality, the man’s intent defines his actions.
It could be said that the man is attempting to “hurt his own family” or any number of things, but the main intent of the man was to do a service to the general public, and all of the other classifications of his actions would be direct that, not actions in and of themselves. A rule utilitarian would be unable to evaluate a single action by every single way it could be defined, so the fundamental intention of the action would be the best way to examine it.
Now, while it may seem impractical to analyze the decisions of a fictional character at first glance, in reality it’s a very interesting way to analyze the many theories of rational choice. While it’s possible to create examples that illustrate the mentality of act and rul entality of act and rule utilitarians, it’s much more effective to look at a decision that has already been made and see if it can be classified under either or both. Additionally, it is interesting that the analysis can show that two different, but both perfectly rational, views of the same school of thought can lead to polar opposite decisions.