Jim And The Indians Case Study

In this essay I argue that the moral theory consequentialism is a far better solution to the case with ‘Jim and the Indians’ rather than the deontology. I shall begin by describing the case of ‘Jim and the Indians’ and will then continue by briefly defining each moral theory that can be used in this philosophical question. Throughout my essay I shall argue on why consequentialism is far superior to deontology in the difficult decisions that Jim will face.
Jim has found himself in quite the predicament. “When arriving in a South American town he has happened upon a captain and his army about to assassinate twenty Indians in order to deter other Indians protesting against the government. Jim is offered the privilege of shooting one of the Indians …show more content…
Although killing is morally wrong, morality is a subjective concept to different people, in this case what seems morally wrong would be for Jim to simply do nothing at all, leaving twenty innocent people to be murdered rather than killing one, and as it says in the text many of “the men against the wall, and the other villagers, understand the situation, and are obviously begging him to accept”, if the Indians are truly begging for Jim to accept, surely one would volunteer to die for the sake of the other Indians lives. While Jim would still be killing someone, he would at least know that it was consensual, and in the end would it aid the Indians in their protest against the government by creating a martyr out of the Indian who sacrificed him/herself for their people and the cause they are fighting for. Both Deontology and consequentialism have two different end results, if Jim chooses the other option. Consequentialism says that if Jim does not kill the Indian he is then responsible for the other nineteen deaths. The end result in this scenario proves that the consequentialist approach has a far happier ending than the deontologist one, it seems that the deontological approach would be a more selfish ending in this …show more content…
In my opinion consequentialists can explain many moral insights that trouble deontological theories. In this scenario moderate deontologists, judge that it is morally wrong to kill one person to save nineteen others. They never specify the line between what is morally wrong and what is not morally wrong, and it is hard to imagine any non-subjective way for deontologists to justify an end point. Consequentialists can simply say that the line belongs wherever the benefits outweigh the costs (including any bad side effects), “If consequentialists can better explain more common moral intuitions, then consequentialism might have more explanatory coherence overall, despite being counterintuitive in some