Utilitarianism as most people practice it is not strictly about how many people live or die. Killing someone “fairly” and according to a predetermined set of rules presumably seemed better to the survivors than killing, say, whoever was least able to defend themselves, and worse to the survivors than eating someone who had died of natural causes, even though in all three cases the total number of survivors was the same.
I would certainly prefer the outcome (1 person dies, everyone else feels really bad about it) to the outcome (2 people die, everyone else doesn’t feel bad). I think most people would in this experiment, with a small group of survivors. But there exists a number of people involved (I’ll say it’s smaller than 3^^^3) so that I would prefer outcome A to outcome B.
Therefore, considerations beside death could theoretically be significant, and utilitarianism can’t be simplified to body count.
Utilitarianism as most people practice it is not strictly about how many people live or die. Killing someone “fairly” and according to a predetermined set of rules presumably seemed better to the survivors than killing, say, whoever was least able to defend themselves, and worse to the survivors than eating someone who had died of natural causes, even though in all three cases the total number of survivors was the same.
It doesn’t seem like one event like that is significant next to entire lives unlived, though.
I would certainly prefer the outcome (1 person dies, everyone else feels really bad about it) to the outcome (2 people die, everyone else doesn’t feel bad). I think most people would in this experiment, with a small group of survivors. But there exists a number of people involved (I’ll say it’s smaller than 3^^^3) so that I would prefer outcome A to outcome B.
Therefore, considerations beside death could theoretically be significant, and utilitarianism can’t be simplified to body count.