What is rule utilitarianism

The rule utilitarian would need to consider what would the long term consequences be if doctors were to lie to those who come to them and have life threatening, incurable illnesses.

The rule utilitarian might calculate that people would no longer be able to trust their doctors and this would break down the confidence they need for their therapies to be effective. The same result might obtain were there to be a consideration of cheating on an examination. The single act might produce a great deal of happiness for the cheater, teacher, family and friends.

The rule of cheating might produce quite the opposite result as society could no longer trust that the doctors, lawyers, engineers, repair people etc.. Every act is evaluated according to the utility. They must never accept unhappiness if they can minimize it. They must actually poll or measure what act will produce the greatest utility. It all depends on the consequences of the act, the results are what matters not the act.

The idea behind Rule Utilitarianism is that whenever you are in a situation and have alternatives you calculate the utility to be produced by adopting a course of action rule which would produce the greatest utility in the long run if it were followed every time that situation arose.

Let's consider the rule that states you must stop your vehicle at a red traffic light. Situation: Pregnant woman in back seat. About to deliver. Water has broken. Contractions are 2 minutes apart. It is 4am.

The vehicle is 2 miles from the hospital. There are no other cars around. The RU would think if you were as a rule to break the law and go through that red light it would produce more utility than not doing so and therefore would be the morally GOOD thing to do. So the RU RULE would be to go through red lights whenever it is 4am and there is a pregnant woman in the back seat who is about to deliver and you are heading to the hospital.

If a person makes a promise but breaking the promise will allow that person to perform an action that creates just slightly more well-being than keeping the promise will, then act utilitarianism implies that the promise should be broken. See Ross The general form of each of these arguments is the same. Possible Responses to Criticisms of Act Utilitarianism There are two ways in which act utilitarians can defend their view against these criticisms.

Rule Utilitarianism: Pros and Cons Unlike act utilitarians, who try to maximize overall utility by applying the utilitarian principle to individual acts, rule utilitarians believe that we can maximize utility only by setting up a moral code that contains rules. Arguments for Rule Utilitarianism i. Rule Utilitarianism Avoids the Criticisms of Act Utilitarianism As discussed earlier, critics of act utilitarianism raise three strong objections against it.

Judges, Doctors, and Promise-makers Critics of act utilitarianism claim that it allows judges to sentence innocent people to severe punishments when doing so will maximize utility, allows doctors to kill healthy patients if by doing so, they can use the organs of one person to save more lives, and allows people to break promises if that will create slightly more benefits than keeping the promise.

Maintaining vs. Undermining Trust Rule utilitarians see the social impact of a rule-based morality as one of the key virtues of their theory. Impartiality and the Problem of Over-Demandingness Rule utilitarians believe that their view is also immune to the criticism that act utilitarianism is too demanding.

Arguments against Rule Utilitarianism i. Wrong Answers and Crude Concepts Although rule utilitarians try to avoid the weaknesses attributed to act utilitarianism, critics argue that they cannot avoid these weaknesses because they do not take seriously many of our central moral concepts.

Conclusion The debate between act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism highlights many important issues about how we should make moral judgments. References and Further Reading a. Classic Works Jeremy Bentham. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation , available in many editions, John Stuart Mill.

Utilitarianism , available in many editions and online, See especially chapter II, in which Mill tries both to clarify and defend utilitarianism. Passages at the end of chapter suggest that Mill was a rule utilitarian.

In chapter V, Mill tries to show that utilitarianism is compatible with justice. Henry Sidgwick. The Methods of Ethics , Seventh Edition, available in many editions, Sidgwick is known for his careful, extended analysis of utilitarian moral theory and competing views. Principia Ethica, Oxford: Oxford University Press, Mostly focused on utilitarianism, this book contains a combination of act and rule utilitarian ideas. More Recent Utilitarians J.

Cambridge University Press, Richard Brandt. Ethical Theory. Prentice Hall, Chapter Morality, Utilitarianism, and Rights. Brandt developed and defended rule utilitarianism in many papers. This book contains several of them as well as works in which he applies rule utilitarian thinking to issues like rights and the ethics of war. Moral Thinking.

Oxford University Press, An interesting development of a form of rule utilitarianism by an influential moral theorist.

John C. Reprinted in Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams, eds. Harsanyi, a Nobel Prize economist, defends rule utilitarianism, connecting it to a preference theory of value and a theory of rational action. John Rawls.

Before becoming an influential critic of utilitarianism, Rawls wrote this defense of rule utilitarianism. Brad Hooker. In this 21 st century defense of rule utilitarianism, Hooker places it in the context of more recent developments in philosophy. Peter Singer. Writings on an Ethical Life. HarperCollins, Singer, a prolific, widely read thinker, mostly applies a utilitarian perspective to controversial moral issues for example, euthanasia, the treatment of non-human animals, and global poverty rather than discussing utilitarian moral theory.

This volume contains selections from his books and articles. Reprinted in Peter Singer. Harper Collins, This widely reprinted article, though it does not focus on utilitarianism, uses utilitarian reasoning and has sparked decades of debate about moral demandingness and moral impartiality.

Robert Goodin. Utilitarianism as a Public Philosophy. In a series of essays, Goodin argues that utilitarianism is the best philosophy for public decision-making even if it fails as an ethic for personal aspects of life.

Derek Parfit. On What Matters. In a long, complex work, Parfit stresses the importance of Henry Sidgwick as a moral philosopher and argues that rule utilitarianism and Kantian deontology can be understood in a way that makes them compatible with one another.

Overviews Tim Mulgan. Understanding Utilitarianism. Acumen, This is a very clear description of utilitarianism, including explanations of arguments both for and against. Chapter 2 discusses Bentham, Mill, and Sidgwick while chapter 6 focuses on act and rule utilitarianism.

This article gives a good historical account of important figures in the development of utilitarianism. This very useful overview is relevant to utilitarianism and other forms of consequentialism.

William Shaw. Contemporary Ethics: Taking Account of Utilitarianism. Blackwell, Shaw provides a clear, comprehensive discussion of utilitarianism and its critics as well as defending utilitarianism. John Troyer. The Classical Utilitarians: Bentham and Mill.

Hackett, Ben Eggleston and Dale Miller, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Utilitarianism. This collection contains sixteen essays on utilitarianism, including essays on historical figures as well as discussion of 21 st century issues, including both act and rule utilitarianism. Mill and Utilitarian Moral Theory J. Roger Crisp. Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Mill on Utilitarianism.

Routledge, West, ed. Henry R. A clear discussion of Mill; Chapter 4 argues that Mill is neither an act nor a rule utilitarian. Chapter 6 focuses on utilitarianism and justice.

Dale Miller. Polity Press, Miller, in Chapter 6, argues that Mill was a rule utilitarian. Stephen Nathanson. The Cambridge Companion to Mill. Cambridge University Press, , — David Lyons. Oxford, Critics of Utilitarianism David Lyons. Forms and Limits of Utilitarianism. Lyons argues that at least some versions of rule utilitarianism collapse into act utilitarianism. Morality, Rules, and Consequences. Rowman and Littlefield, In a challenging essay, Lyons raises doubts about whether there is any coherent version of utilitarianism.

Judith Jarvis Thomson. Reprinted in Judith Jarvis Thomson. Rights, Restitution and Risk. That seems paradoxical. Things get worse when we consider blame and guilt. Suppose you follow the best possible decision procedure but fail to do the act with the best consequences.

Are you to be blamed? Should you feel guilty? Global consequentialism claims that you should be blamed if and only if blaming you will produce the best consequences, and that you should feel guilty if and only if this will produce the best consequences.

Suppose that for some reason the best consequences would result from blaming you for following the prescribed decision procedure and thus doing x. But surely it is paradoxical for a moral theory to call for you to be blamed although you followed the moral decision procedure mandated by the theory.

Or suppose that for some reason the best consequences would result from blaming you for intentionally choosing the act with the best consequences y. Again, surely it is paradoxical for a moral theory to call for you to be blamed although you intentionally chose the very act required by the theory.

So one problem with global consequentialism is that it creates potential gaps between what acts it claims to be required and what decision procedures it tells agents to use, and between each of these and blamelessness. For explicit replies to this line of attack, see Driver and de Lazari-Radek and Singer — That is not the most familiar problem with global consequentialism. The most familiar problem with it is instead its maximising act-consequentialist criterion of wrongness.

According to this maximising criterion, an act is wrong if and only if it fails to result in the greatest good. This criterion judges some acts to be not wrong which certainly seem to be wrong. It also judges some acts that seem not wrong to be wrong. For example, consider an act of murder that results in slightly more good than any other act would have produced. According to the most familiar, maximising act-consequentialist criterion of wrongness, this act of murder is not wrong.

Many other kinds of act such as assaulting, stealing, promise breaking, and lying can be wrong even when doing them would produce slightly more good than not doing them would.

Again, the familiar, maximising form of act-consequentialism denies this. Or consider someone who gives to her child, or keeps for herself, some resource of her own instead of contributing it to help some stranger who would have gained slightly more from that resource. Such an action hardly seems wrong.

Yet the maximising act-consequentialist criterion judges it to be wrong. Indeed, imagine how much self-sacrifice an averagely well-off person would have to make before her further actions satisfied the maximising act-consequentialist criterion of wrongness. She would have to give to the point where further sacrifices from her in order to benefit others would harm her more than they would benefit the others.

Thus, the maximising act-consequentialist criterion of wrongness is often accused of being unreasonably demanding. The objections just directed at maximising act-consequentialism could be side-stepped by a version of act-consequentialism that did not require maximising the good.

This sort of act-consequentialism is now called satisficing consequentialism. There are a number of different ways of formulating rule-consequentialism.

For example, it can be formulated in terms of the good that actually results from rules or in terms of the rationally expected good of the consequences of rules. It can be formulated in terms of the consequences of compliance with rules or in terms of the wider consequences of acceptance of rules. Rule-consequentialism is more plausible if formulated in some ways than it is if formulated in other ways.

This is explained in the following three subsections. Questions of formulation are also relevant in the later section on old objections to rule-consequentialism. As indicated, full rule-consequentialism consists in rule-consequentialist answers to three questions. The first is, what makes acts morally wrong? The second is, what procedure should agents use to make their moral decisions?

The third is, what are the conditions under which moral sanctions such as blame, guilt, and praise are appropriate? As we have seen, the answer that full rule-consequentialists give to the question about decision procedure is the same as other kinds of consequentialist give to that question. So let us focus on the points of contrast, i. These two questions — about what makes acts wrong and about when sanctions are appropriate — are more tightly connected than sometimes realized.

With this assumption in hand, we can interpret Mill as tying wrongness tightly to blameworthiness. In a moment, we can consider what follows if Mill is mistaken that wrongness is tied tightly to blameworthiness. First, let us consider what follows if Mill is correct that wrongness is tied tightly to blameworthiness.

Surely, an agent cannot rightly be blamed for accepting and following rules that the agent could not foresee would have sub-optimal consequences.

From this, we get our second premise:. Of course, the actual consequences of accepting a set of rules may not be the same as the foreseeable consequences of accepting that set. Hence, if full rule-consequentialism claims that an act is wrong if and only if the foreseeable consequences of rules allowing that act are sub-optimal, rule-consequentialism cannot hold that an act is wrong if and only if the actual consequences of rules allowing that act will be sub-optimal.

Now suppose instead the relation between wrongness and blameworthiness is far looser than Mill suggested cf. Sorensen That is, suppose that our criterion of wrongness can be quite different from our criterion of blameworthiness. In that case, we could hold:. Here is how expected good of a set of rules is calculated. The acceptance of a set of rules of course has various possible alternative outcomes. Suppose we can identify the value or disvalue of each possible outcome.

Take all the products of these multiplications and add them together. The resulting number is the expected good of that set of rules. Note that expected good is not to be calculated by employing whatever crazy estimates of probabilities people might assign to possible outcomes.

Rather, expected good is calculated by multiplying the value or disvalue of possible outcomes by rational or justified probability estimates. There might be considerable scepticism about how often such calculations are possible. Where such calculations are possible, they will often be quite impressionistic and imprecise.

Nevertheless, we can reasonably hope to make at least some informed judgements about the likely consequences of alternative possible rules. And we could be guided by such judgements. In contrast, which rules would actually have the very best consequences will normally be inaccessible.

Hence, the expectablist rule-consequentialist criterion of blameworthiness is appealing. Now return to the proposal that, while the criterion of blameworthiness is the expectablist rule-consequentialist one, the correct criterion of moral wrongness is the actualist rule-consequentialist one.

There is a very strong objection to this proposal. What is the role and importance of moral wrongness if it is disassociated from blameworthiness? In order to retain an obvious role and importance for moral wrongness, those committed to the expectablist rule-consequentialist criterion of blameworthiness are likely to endorse:.

Indeed, once we have before us the distinction between the amount of value that actually results and the rationally expected good, the full rule-consequentialist is likely to go for expectablist criteria of moral wrongness, blameworthiness, and decision procedures. What if, as far as we can tell, no one code has greater expected value than its rivals?

We will need to amend our expectablist criteria in order to accommodate this possibility:. The argument for using closeness to conventional morality to break ties between otherwise equally promising codes begins with the observation that social change regularly has unexpected consequences.

And these unexpected consequences usually seem to be negative. Furthermore, the greater the difference between a new code and the one already conventionally accepted, the greater the scope for unexpected consequences. So, as between two codes we judge to have equally high expected value, we should choose the one closest to the one we already know.

For discussion of the situation where two codes have equally high expected value and seem equally close to conventional morality, see Hooker For a more nuanced view, see Hooker 83—4. An implication of this is that we should make changes to the status quo where but only where these changes have greater expected value than sticking with the status quo.

Rule-consequentialism manifestly has the capacity to recommend change. But it does not favor change for the sake of change. Rule-consequentialism most definitely does need to be formulated so as to deal with ties in expected value. However, for the rest of this article, I will ignore this complication.

There are other important issues of formulation that rule-consequentialists face. One is the issue of whether rule-consequentialism should be formulated in terms of compliance with rules or in terms of acceptance of rules. Admittedly, the most important aspect of accepting rules is compliance with them. And early formulations of rule-consequentialism did indeed explicitly mention compliance.

For example, they said an act is morally wrong if and only if it is forbidden by rules the compliance with which will maximize the good or the expected good. See Austin ; Brandt ; M. Singer , However, acceptance of a rule can have consequences other than compliance with the rule.

These consequences of acceptance of rules should most definitely be part of a cost-benefit analysis of prospective rules. Formulating rule-consequentialism in terms of the consequences of acceptance allows them to be part of this analysis. In fact, consideration of assurance and incentive effects has played a large role in the development of rule-consequentialism Harsanyi , 56—61; —18; Brandt —77; ff [ ff.

Just as we need to move from thinking about the consequences of compliance to thinking about the wider consequences of acceptance, we need to go further. And yet these can certainly be significant Brandt section 4; [ ]; 98; —47, —50 [ —, —47]; —28, , , , Suppose, for example, that, once a fairly simple and relatively undemanding code of rules Code A has been accepted, the expected value of Code A would be n. So if we just consider the expected values of acceptance of the two alternative codes, Code B wins.

But now let us add in the relative costs of getting the two codes accepted. Once we include the respective costs of getting the codes accepted, Code A wins.

But of course such transitions are always to one arrangement from another. The arrangement we are imagining the transition being to is the acceptance of a certain proposed code. The arrangement we are imagining the transition being from is … well, what? One answer is that the arrangement from which the transition is supposed to be starting is whatever moral code the society happens to accept already. That might seem like the natural answer.

However, it is a poor answer. This is for two reasons. Most importantly, rule-consequentialist assessment of codes needs to avoid giving weight directly or indirectly to moral ideas that have their source in other moral theories but not in rule-consequentialism itself.

Suppose people in a given society were brought up to believe that women should be subservient to men. Should rule-consequentialist evaluation of a proposed non-sexist code have to count the costs of getting people to give up the sexist rules they have already internalised so as to accept the new non-sexist ones? Since the sexist rules are unjustifiable, that they were accepted should not be allowed to infect rule-consequentialist assessment.

Another reason for rejecting the answer we are considering is that it threatens to underwrite an unattractive relativism. Different societies may differ considerably in their extant moral beliefs. So a way of assessing proposed codes that considers the costs of getting people already committed to some other code will end up having to countenance different transition costs to get to the same code.

For example, the transition costs to a non-racist code are much more from an already accepted racist code than from an already accepted non-racist one. Formulating rule-consequentialism so that it endorses the same code for s Michigan as for s Mississippi is desirable. The way to do this is to formulate the theory in terms of acceptance by new generations of humans. We are to imagine the children start off with natural non-moral inclinations to be very partial towards themselves and a few others.

We should also assume that there is a cognitive cost associated with the learning of each rule. These are realistic assumptions, with big implications. Of course there can also be benefits from having more, or more complicated, rules. Yet there is probably a limit on how complicated or complex a code can be and still have greater expected value than simpler codes, once teaching costs are included.

Another implication concerns prospective rules about making sacrifices to help others. Since children start off focused on their own gratifications, getting them to internalise a kind of impartiality that constantly requires them to make large sacrifices for the sake of others would have extremely high costs.

There would also, of course, be enormous benefits from the internalisation of such a rule — predominately, benefits to others.

Would the benefits be greater than the costs? At least since Sidgwick , many utilitarians have taken for granted that human nature is such that the real possibilities are 1 that human beings care passionately about some and less about each of the rest of humanity or 2 that human beings care weakly but impartially about everyone.

If this view is correct, then one enormous cost of successfully making people completely impartial is that doing so would leave them with only weak concerns. Even if that picture of human nature is not correct, that is, even if making people completely impartial could be achieved without draining them of enthusiasm and passion, the cost of successfully making people care as much about every other individual as they do about themselves would be prohibitive. At some point on the spectrum running from complete partiality to complete impartiality, the costs of pushing and inducing everyone further along the spectrum outweigh the benefits.

There will be some people who end up committed to mistaken views about what is morally allowed. Others will never have accepted any morality at all psychopaths. Rule-consequentialism needs to have rules for dealing with such people. These will consist mainly in rules about punishment. From a rule-consequentialist point of view, the main point of punishment is to deter certain kinds of act. There is also the need to get undeterred, dangerous people off the streets.

Perhaps rule-consequentialism can admit that another point of punishment is to appease the primitive lust for revenge on the part of victims of such acts and their family and friends. Finally, there is the expressive and reinforcing power of rules about punishment.

Nevertheless, some ways of formulating rule-consequentialism make having rules about punishment difficult to explain. One such way of formulating rule-consequentialism is:. Suppose absolutely every adult human fully accepts rules forbidding for example physical attacks on the innocent, stealing, promise breaking, and lying. Then presumably there would be little or no need for rules about punishment. Without need for rules about punishment, society would get little or no benefit from such rules.

But there is a cost associated with each rule included in a code. So there is a cost associated with the inclusion of any rule about punishment. Because of this combination of cost with no benefit, rules about punishment would not be endorsed by the form of rule-consequentialism immediately above.

We need a form of rule-consequentialism that includes rules for dealing with people who are not committed to the right rules, indeed even for people who are irredeemable. In other words, rule-consequentialism needs to be formulated so as to conceptualise society as containing some people insufficiently committed to the right rules, and even some people never committed to any moral rules.

Utilitarianism holds that whatever produces the greatest utility pleasure or any other such value as defined and justified by the utilitarian is good and that which produces the greatest nett utility, is considered right. Both theories count as utilitarian because both define that which produces the greatest utility as good and seek for the greatest nett amount of utility, be it either through actions or indirectly through rules.

One objection to rule-utilitarianism is that in some situations the utility of breaking a certain rule could be greater than keeping it. John Smart argues that refusal to break a generally beneficial rule in cases where it would be beneficial to do so seems irrational for a utilitarian and is a form of rule-worship.

When a rule-utilitarian is compelled to break a rule, he or she will be forced to modify the rule in order to repair the theory.