Charis Kaps- Moral Philosophy
Does rule-utilitarianism avoid the problems of act-utilitarianism?
To begin exploring the issues of act and rule utilitarianism, their practicality and problems posed through their application in modern society, I shall first give an account of the two schools.
To begin with, we shall look at act-utilitarianism, as it is the form which best fits Mill’s account of utilitarian principles, applied rigorously and concisely to everyday situations. Act utilitarianism is the view that the ‘rightness’ or ‘wrongness’ (the amount of pleasure/pain it causes) of an action should be decided upon the consequences of that specific action. That is to say each situation must be evaluated separately, taking all things into account, for the right action to be decided upon.
Rule-utilitarianism is the principle that universal rules should be adhered to by everyone, which actions, generally, provide the best consequences for the most people. This principle is generally more negative in that its function is to prohibit, not prescribe as is the case with act utilitarianism. There are two recognised sub-varieties of rule-utilitarianism according to whether one construes ‘rule’ as ‘actual rule’ or ‘possible rule’. The latter is in accordance with Kant’s principle ‘Act only on that maxim through which at the same time will that it should become a universal law’; the former refers to the institutional and legal existence of a rule as law. As the question suggests, rule is often seen as a more comprehensive and practical form of utilitarianism than act, I shall now identify the problems posed by act utilitarianism, in order to ascertain whether rule utilitarianism does in fact successfully avoid them. Act utilitarianism poses in the main, problems in the vain of practicality, including the impossibility of judging consequences correctly before an action is even carried out, its openness to violation (in that some people’s moral standards would be questionable) and the simple problem of time; if people were to live their lives by this principle, they would spend half of it trying to weigh up ends and means. There is also the difference between moral intuitions (a supposed innate knowledge of the good), and fact, for example, homophobia as an intuition, or racism. The following of general rules then, would eradicate these specific problems caused by the use of act utilitarianism, because individuals would no longer have to try to reason and deduce the likely consequences of an action, as they have directive decision making guide already established, which also eliminates the problems of time and vulnerability to violation. Rule utilitarianism also avoids the problem of people's dverse and distinct personal moral intuitions. Rule-utilitarianism then, ensures a base moral standard, which, if abided by, will generally provide the best consequences. Immoral actions can no longer be justified by the principle of utility, as is plausible with the use of act utilitarianism , however this feature alone can be viewed in the reverse and seen as a downfall of rule utilitarianism; as the ‘best’ (in the moral sense) rules are not simply a case do/don’t, but much more specific. An example to illustrate this point is ‘always keep promises’- the best version in utilitarian terms would be ‘always keep promises except when…’, as in specific circumstances, what would usually be the right action may prove to be the most harmful, or immoral. This feature poses a problem not only with ‘do so’ rules, but also with ‘do not’ rules, such as: ‘You must not torture’- again
