It’s easy to forgot public opinion when it comes to making decisions on utilitarianism basis and how it is still a factor to our happiness.
Would it be right to kill one man and use his organs to save five other people? (Trolley problem)
If we assume by saving the five lives would result in more happiness, this seems like the obvious choice for any utilitarianist. I’d like to point out other people opinion’s that are not directly involved also play a role.
Would you like to live in a country that did this? I’m assuming you’ll say no, if enough people are unhappy about the situation this can counteract the total happiness gained to the population by these five individuals survival, so in a utilitarianist basis it would still be seen as wrong.
Fundamental rights
Fundamental rights were a way of explaining about our thoughts on moral issues to ourselves and other people, if you feel against killing an innocent life to save five others you might say “It’s fundamentally wrong to kill an innocent person.”
This what happens in the Trolley problem, (watch video in link) when you give people the first scenario, they feel its right to save the five and they may say “It’s right to save more lives” you can ask them are they sure and they’d agree, though when you give them the second example they’d disagree and think of a new reason to explain their feelings in both examples. We do this to explain the reasons why we make any decision, there are thousands of psychological experiments were seemingly unrelated issues influence our decisions, it has been shown that people eat more under blue light but if you were to ask people why did you eat as much as you did, I doubt they would say because of the blue light, people tip more when it’s sunny, you are more likely to say yes when holding a hot drink than a cold one, this type of psychology is also on display if you've ever tried to define works such as "game". So if people just slightly makeup reasons why they think something is right or wrong what should we believe?
Summary
I don't know if fundamental rights are right or wrong, fundamental rights don't have to give you the best solution in every scenario but it has to increase happiness in the long term and any system that would increase happiness faster would trump the one proceeding it. I have no idea what systems of governance or in society increase happiness, though I do think happiness is what we should be basing it on.
