ETHICS ESSAY 1

Edgar Fabian Lioner Rocha

The hibernation pods kant fail, but yet they did.

Opening Scene [Modified screenplay]

The movie Passengers has a massive moral dilemma followed by numerous moral

acts which may align with either the deontological perspective, an utilitarian perspective or

even could potentially be ethically wrong according to both. In this essay we will explore the

moral engines behind several actions performed throughout the film while quickly exploring

the broken morality between the advertised dilemma, which in this essay is not a priority.

While utilitarianism could be considered the driving moral perspective that guided both Jim’s

and Aurora’s actions, there are several moments in the film the a deontological approach is

strongly seen, there is acknowledgements of actions being bad by nature while ignoring the

consequences, but at the end of the film the “end” with the most happiness is what our

characters strive for, determining utilitarianism as the predominant presence in Passengers​.

Immanuel Kant introduced us to what we now know as the categorical imperative, a

way of thinking about morality that requires the individual to treat other people always as the

ends and never as the means of their actions. Kant suggests us to act as if our actions could

easily become a universal law. If you’re considering stealing some food to feed your starving

self, you would need to admit you are comfortable making the act of stealing a morally

correct action and therefore everyone could steal since it would become a universal law, and

no one could accept this, to worsen the situation, it could create an endless loop of you

stealing something from me and me stealing it back, these two problems with stealing are

addressed in the categorical imperative: If you would not accept something as a universal

law, if you wouldn’t like the same action to be performed on you, then it is morally incorrect,

and the categorical imperative does not allow you to give yourself a special exception to

violate the law and commit a morally incorrect act because you’re hungry, the morality of the

act will not change, so thanks to this analysis of Kant's work we can know the first

mechanism to determine the morality of an action via deontology.

The other mechanism to determine the morality is if, for example we were to allow

stealing, the consequence of allowing stealing cannot contradict itself, therefore if allowing

stealing creates this loop of stealing and stealing back, it tells us that stealing is wrong, and

morally broken (it wouldn’t work if it was freely allowed).

“Utilitarianism is the moral theory that an action is morally right if and only if it is

productive of the most utility (happiness, pleasure) for the greatest number of

persons.”(Greenwood, 2006) When it comes to analysing a moral dilemma or considering

which moral path to take we can analyze the situation by using the Modified Hedonistic

Calculus presented to us by J. Bentham. Following Bentham’s instructions we would need to

consider the Intensity of the pleasure and the pain that would be generated by our action,

and the Duration of this either pleasure or pain, next we would need to know the amount of

certainty of this pleasure or pain actually occurring, once we have considered these
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variables we could move on, onto how far off in the future would the consequences appear,

and once the pain or pleasure appears, which is the probability that this either pleasure or

pain would lead to more pleasure or more pain, and finally to how many more people would

our consequences be delivered.

We know that there are two sides to utilitarianism, act and rule utilitarianism, the first

one being the more radical one, while rule utilitarianism is the toned down version that

doesn’t involve killing your lonely neighbour that no one loves to give some patients their

much needed organ transplants. In the movie passengers the most common side of

utilitarianism we’re going to find is a less extreme version of act utilitarianism that does not

invade other people’s liberty as hard as the most aggressive examples of act utilitarianism

might suggest, as well as we are able to find a weak form of rule utilitarianism, one that

allows lies to slip through that would amount to the greater good on the long run.

Even though the main dilemma of the film was ethically wrong therefore cannot fit

with these two perspectives and consequently is not the main topic of this essay, it will be

quickly pointed out why both the deontological and utilitarian approaches reject Jim’s

decision to wake up Aurora. From a deontological perspective, we will use the two

mechanisms that were proposed in the above paragraphs so: First of all, waking someone

up without their consent is something that no one would like, Jim is a clear example of this,

he descended into a deep depression and almost immediately tried to get himself back to

sleep, so this tells us that he wouldn’t have wanted to have the situation reversed on him,

therefore he would not accept his act as a universal law, and he acknowledges this several

times. Secondly, waking up more and more people could become an endless loop that

would cause even more harm, which would be a contradiction, cementing his action as

morally broken according to the deontological perspective. When it comes to the utilitarian

perspective, if we apply the hedonistic calculus, we find out that he couldn’t have been

certain of neither the duration of either the pain or pleasure caused by him waking up, he
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knew beforehand the certainty of pain occurring once she found out, so the bentham’s

variables tell us how catastrophic his action could become, and later in the film they did, and

even though it turned out right in the end, no one had a way to predict that (in real life terms,

since as a movie-watching experience it was indeed very predictable).

Now when it comes to more moral acts, we can now start to classify them between

these two points of view on ethics. Most of the film is Utilitarian, as it will be presented, but

some Deontological arguments will also be presented to argue against the dominance of

utilitarianism in the film. The first example of how the film is mostly utilitarian is Jim’s

sacrifice. Jim’s sacrifice while opening the latch door to the reactor’s exhaust is extremely

utilitarian, as shown by the Hedonistic Calculus, by using it we know that the intensity of the

pain to Aurora would be immense, but the intensity of the pleasure (happiness) of all the

other passengers would be almost as equal since they would not be quite dead. And while

the duration to Aurora might last a good chunk of her life, the pleasure to all the other

passengers would last hundreds of generations in a new colonial planet. And while the pain

will be immediate and the happiness would take time, the extent of the pleasure greatly

outperforms all other utilitarian variables, being in a ratio of more than 5000 to 1. From a

deontological perspective, staying at the exhaust door would be suicide, and suicide is

deontologically wrong since it does not value human life enough, no matter if the

consequence involves greater deaths, so the action of going to your own death would

always be universally wrong from a deontological perspective therefore making it impossible

to argue for it as a description to Jim’s sacrifice

The second example of how the film is utilitarian is when aurora decides to share her

golden class breakfast benefits with Jim, for some taking a double serving, when no limit is

clearly stated is ok while for some the fact that Aurora took double breakfast is wrong since it

could be seen as taking advantage of the system, and abusing the system that way would

be wrong,if all passengers were awake and she took double portion it would be seen as
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unfair, specially from the lower classes, even though she would be giving it away, this is an

example of no matter the excuse, from a deontological point of view, the action is wrong

even though the consequences. So a strong deontological view would not like this action,

while even the softest implementation of utilitarianism praises her action.” I'm not a

gold-class passenger.

French breakfast puff's above my pay grade. What? This whole time?”(Spaiths, 2016) In

utilitarianism, the fact that she is taking a double portion to more adequately feed Jim is

morally correct, there are no short term negative consequences to her taking a double

portion of breakfast while the impact on her actions makes Jim extremely happy, and then

she gets even happier seeing how she made someone happy, her utilitarian act increased

the overall happiness levels of everyone by several orders of magnitude.

As it was said earlier, a weaker version of utilitarianism allows for white lies to

guarantee a higher happiness level. “She thinks it was an accident. Let me tell her.”

(Spaiths, 2016) When Jim asks Arthur not to tell Aurora that Jim woke her up, he is doing

this because it is what would cause the most immediate happiness, and assuming that Jim’s

intentions were truly honest when he told arthur that he wanted to break the news to Aurora,

this would mean that when the time came for Jim to tell aurora he had woken her up, Jim

could have found the corrects words to break down the news to cause the less sadness and

heartbreak. So even though lying is bad, it was done to maintain happiness, and if Jim

eventually was planning to tell the truth in the softest lest harming way possible, then the

overall pain inflicted would have been less. Even though the act of waking her up has no

excuses and was abominable, the decision to temporarily lie, was to avoid intense pain. (But

we all know how arthur messed up, and to be honest that whole thing was a massive time

bomb.) Finally aurora pulling the lever knowing that could kill Jim would be forbidden by

deontology but from an utilitarian perspective you would be sacrificing one life, that is willing
ETHICS ESSAY 6

to be sacrificed, in order to save 5256 others(4999 passengers and 257 crew members still

alive), and then it just becomes non debatable from an act utilitarian perspective.

Contrary to the previous examples, a moral act that aligns with deontology would be

when Aurora comes to Jim’s suite at attempts to murder him before quickly stopping.

Regardless if the consequences could have made her happier, the action was bad on its

own, and therefore the driving force that ultimately stopped her, bringing her back to the

moral high ground. You could say that her not killing Jim lead to the most happiness but she

had no way of knowing that she would forgive him and live happily ever after, so from the

utilitarian variables, the risk was unclear, so an utilitarian mechanism to guide her morality

would not be the appropriate choice, and the simple fact of determining murder as

universally wrong and something she would not desire upon herself was enough of a driving

force to stop her.

Another example that would argue for deontology rather than utilitarianism would be

when Aurora accepted to help Jim and eventually saved him even though she did not have

to. If she had not forgiven him, helping him and saving him would have been the morally

correct deontological approaches, since regardless of the consequences, from a

agent-centered perspective it is easy to understand how one could appreciate being helped

if it was necessary, therefore helping someone out in a quest to save a ship and

subsequently saving that same person from dying in space could easily become universal

rules. They are not contradicted, if you find someone in outer space nearly dying and you

are able to safely save them then, regardless if the act of that person staying alive would

bring you happiness it should still be saved, since no matter the consequences, letting

another person unnecessary die is forbidden under deontology. If the movie played out

slightly differently and Aurora hadn’t forgiven Jim, then she should have still saved him, so in

this case it would be a mix of both the act being ethical by itself and the amount of future

happiness in mind.
ETHICS ESSAY 7

All throughout the film we find a grey side of morality ever since the main dilemma

was shown to us as the viewers, and from there on we are set up to the task to classify the

remaining acts in the perspectives in which they fit the most, to help understand the reasons

why the characters took the decisions that they did and how their decision depended on

either deontology or utilitarianism. As we can see, the predominant ethical guide to

Passengers is found in Utilitarianism, supported by its Modified Hedonistic Calculus and its

variables, while this does not mean that a deontological approach wasn’t present, it means it

just wasn’t the mechanism driving most of the moral acts presented in the film. There were

5000 people on board and yet Kant didn’t get to be a passenger this time.

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Deontological Ethics (2016) ​Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.​ Retrieved from:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/
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https://www.scripts.com/script/passengers_15649

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The History of Utilitarianism (2014) ​Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.​ Retrieved from:

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The School Of Life (2015) PHILOSOPHY: Immanuel Kant [MP4] Retrieved from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsgAsw4XGvU

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