Rule utilitarianism

Rule utilitarianism is a form of utilitarianism which states that moral actions are those which conform to the rules which lead to the greatest good, or that "the rightness or wrongness of a particular action is a function of the correctness of the rule of which it is an instance."^[1] For rule utilitarians, the correctness of a rule is determined by the amount of good it brings about when followed. In contrast, act utilitarians judge actions in terms of the goodness of their consequences without reference to rules of action. Another variation of rule utilitarianism stresses the greater utility of following a given rule in general, arguing that the practice of following some rule in all instances (always stopping at red lights, for example) will have better consequences overall than allowing exceptions to be made in individual instances, even if better consequences can be demonstrated in those instances. Rule Utilitarianism can also be seen as practice rule which states that, even though in some or most cases the rule wouldn't cause the greatest good, if the rule was never followed then it would not cause the greatest good for the greatest number of people. For example the fifth amendment states, "No person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." even though that rule protects many criminals from being caught, if that rule was not established then people could be tortured or threatened into confessing crimes they didn't commit. So if there was no fifth amendment it would not cause the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

Mill's formulation

In his 1861 book Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill defends the concept of rights in terms of utility: "To have a right, then, is, I conceive, to have something which society ought to defend me in the possession of. If the objector goes on to ask, why it ought? I can give him no other reason than general utility."^[2] Whether Mill was a rule utilitarian is a matter of controversy;^[3] he also argues that it is sometimes right to violate general ethical rules:

… justice is a name for certain moral requirements, which, regarded collectively, stand higher in the scale of social utility, and are therefore of more paramount obligation, than any others; though particular cases may occur in which some other social duty is so important, as to overrule any one of the general maxims of justice. Thus, to save a life, it may not only be allowable, but a duty, to steal, or take by force, the necessary food or medicine, or to kidnap, and compel to officiate, the only qualified medical practitioner.^[2]

Other things being equal people are happier if their society follows rules so people know what types of behaviour they can expect from others in given situations. Therefore utilitarians can justify a system that goes, "Keep to the rules unless there is a strong reason for breaking them."

Specific criticism

A specific criticism of rule utilitarianism states that it collapses into act utilitarianism. David Lyons^[4] argued that collapse occurs because for any given rule, in the case where breaking the rule produces more utility, the rule can be sophisticated by the addition of a sub-rule that handles cases like the exception. This process holds for all cases of exceptions, and so the ‘rules’ will have as many ‘sub-rules’ as there are exceptional cases, which, in the end, makes an agent seek out whatever outcome produces the maximum utility.^[5]

See also

• Act utilitarianism
• Two-level utilitarianism
• Preference utilitarianism
• John Stuart Mill
• Richard Brandt
• Henry Hazlitt
• Brad Hooker
• Peter Singer
• Rule egoism

References

Further reading

• Brad Hooker's entry on rule consequentialism in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: [1]

• Brad Hooker, Ideal Code, Real World Oxford University Press, 2000, new edition 2002

• Hazlitt, Henry (1964). The Foundations of Morality. Irvington-on-Hudson,NY: Foundation for Economic Education.

• Smart, J. J. C. "Extreme and Restricted Utilitarianism" The Victorian Branch of the Australasian Association of Psychology and Philosophy (October 1955).