Really? I find that utilitarianism is not at all the common way of looking at the world. It is trivial to come up with ethical examples that utilitarianism disagrees with the gut-instinct version.
It is trivial to come up with ethical examples that utilitarianism disagrees with the gut-instinct version.
That's true. But the typical formulation for utilitarianism -- "if a trolley is hurtling down the track, certain to kill 5 people ahead of it, is it OK to divert it onto a different track if that will result in killing a single person?" -- is very difficult to talk someone out of.
The idea that minimizing the number of deaths overrides any absolute prohibition on taking a person's life is pretty much impossible to overcome. Hence my conclusion that utilitarianism is, or has become, the default mode of reasoning.
