Traditional moral codes often consist of sets of rules regarding types of actions. According to Kant, if A is trying to murder B and A asks you where B is, it would be wrong for you to lie to A, even if lying would save B’s life (Kant). Nonetheless, these discretionary actions are permitted because having a rule in these cases does not maximize utility or because the best rule may impose some constraints on how people act while still permitting a lot of discretion in deciding what to do. If we knew that people would fail to keep promises whenever some option arises that leads to more utility, then we could not trust people who make promises to us to carry them through. Email: s.nathanson@neu.edu In this series of papers, Lyons defends Mill’s view of morality against some critics, differentiates Mill’s views from  both act and rule utilitarianism, and criticizes Mill’s attempt to show that utilitarianism can account for justice. The two kinds are extensionally equivalent and the only stable rule available to the rule-utilitarian is the act-utilitarian one, e.g. In their view, while the rescuer’s action was wrong, it would be a mistake to blame or criticize the rescuer because the bad results of his act were unforeseeable. First, the best rule of conduct is found. That is, actions should be done if and only if it produces the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. These two forms of utilitarianism differ from each other. Bentham's theory is act-utilitarian, and so is that of J.J.C. If the overall aim is to maximize the well-being of all people in all cities, for example, then we are likely to get better results by having individuals who know and understand particular cities focus on them while other people focus on other cities. Actual Consequences or Foreseeable Consequences? The rule-utilitarian might defend the theory by saying that it is beneficial to follow the rule in most cases, so the general good is still increased when looking at a series of situations. yields more overall utility than a rule that rejects punishment because it treats some people unfairly. Likewise, on the negative side, a lack of food, friends, or freedom is instrumentally bad because it produces pain, suffering, and unhappiness; but pain, suffering and unhappiness are intrinsically bad, i.e. Rule utilitarianism does not have this problem because it is committed to rules, and these rules generate positive “expectation effects” that give us a basis for knowing how other people are likely to behave. Consider Kant’s claim that lying is always morally wrong, even when lying would save a person’s life. Utilitarianism An Introduction to the Moral Theories of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill If we sometimes choose actions that produce less utility than is possible, the total utility of our actions will be less than the amount of goodness that we could have produced. Teachers, for example have special duties to students in their own classes and have no duty to educate all students. As a utilitarian, you should choose the flavor that will result in the most pleasure for the group as a whole. Jeremy Bentham is the founder of an approach to moral philosophy called Utilitarianism. An important point in this case is that you should choose chocolate even if you are one of the three people who enjoy vanilla more than chocolate. Their method for determining the well-being of a group involved adding up the benefits and losses that members of the group would experience as a result of adopting one action or policy. VIEW: VIDEO on ACT and RULE UTILITY Utilitarianism, in normative ethics, a tradition stemming from the late 18th- and 19th-century English philosophers and economists Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill according to which an action (or type of action) is right if it tends to promote happiness or pleasure and wrong if it tends to produce unhappiness or pain—not just for the performer of the action but also for everyone else affected by it. The utilitarian method requires you to count everyone’s interests equally. Utilitarianism comes from the branch of ethics concerned with doing what is right for the majority of people. Rule utilitarians adopt a two part view that stresses the importance of moral rules. Utilitarianism is a philosophical view or theory about how we should evaluate a wide range of things that involve choices that people face. Brandt, who coined the terms “act” and “rule” utilitarianism, explains and criticizes act utilitarianism and tentatively proposes a version of rule utilitarianism. Act utilitarianism is based on consequences while rule utilitarianism is based on rules. Utility is often defined as happiness or pleasure, although there are other variants, such as the satisfaction of preferences, or preference utilitarianism. A key point in this article concerns the distinction between individual actions and types of actions. Using this information, Bentham thought, would allow for making correct judgments both in individual cases and in choices about government actions and policies. This issue arises when the actual effects of actions differ from what we expected. How can rule utilitarianism do this? This has led to scholarly debates about whether the classical utilitarians supported act utilitarians or rule utilitarians or some combination of these views. According to rule utilitarians, this can only be justified if a rule that permits punishments (after a fair trial, etc.) This contrasts it with varieties of indirect utilitarianism, as well as with ethical systems that accord priority to duty or personal virtue. Utilitarianism is an ethical theory founded by Jeremy Bentham and developed and popularized by John Stuart Mill. Overall then, rule utilitarian can allow departures from rules and will leave many choices up to individuals. What is Act Utilitarianism? Because they do not maximize utility, these wrong answers would not be supported by act utilitarians and therefore, do nothing to weaken their theory. Act utilitarians believe that whenever we are deciding what to do, we should perform the action that will create the greatest net utility. David Lyons. It suggests that people should make decisions that generate the greatest happiness for society. Act utilitarians see the stop sign as too rigid because it requires drivers to stop even when nothing bad will be prevented. Whatever action x is, the moral requirement and the moral prohibition expressed in these rules collapses into the act utilitarian rules “do x only when not doing x maximizes utility” or “do not do x except when doing x maximizes utility.” These rules say exactly the same thing as the open-ended act utilitarian rule “Do whatever action maximizes utility.”. So the correct rule need not be “never go through a stop sign” but rather can be something like “never go through a stop sign except in cases that have properties a and b.” In addition, there will remain many things about driving or other behavior that can be left to people’s discretion. Overall these rules generate greater utility because they prevent more disutility (from accidents) than they create (from “unnecessary” stops). A clear discussion of Mill; Chapter 4 argues that Mill is neither an act nor a rule utilitarian. Foreseeable consequence utilitarians understand the theory as a decision-making procedure while actual consequence utilitarians understand it as a criterion of right and wrong. Act utilitarians may sometimes support the intentional punishment of innocent people, but rule utilitarians will understand the risks involved and will oppose a practice that allows it. The problem with act utilitarians is that they support a moral view that has the effect of undermining trust and that sacrifices the good effects of a moral code that supports and encourages trustworthiness. If, however, utilitarians judge the rescuer’s action by its foreseeable consequences (i.e. bad in themselves and not because they produce some further bad thing. If we know that our system of criminal justice punishes some people unjustly and in ways they don’t deserve, we are faced with a dilemma. Jeremy Bentham provided a model for this type of decision making in his description of a “hedonic calculus,” which was meant to show what factors should be used to determine amounts of pleasure and happiness, pain and suffering. Rule utilitarians believe that their view is also immune to the criticism that act utilitarianism is too demanding. According to rule utilitarians, a) a specific action is morally justified if it conforms to a justified moral rule; and b) a moral rule is justified if its inclusion into our moral code would create more utility than other possible rules (or no rule at all). Ten essays that debate act vs. rule utilitarianism as well as whether a form of utilitarianism is correct. In a famous article, Peter Singer defends the view that people living in affluent countries should not purchase luxury items for themselves when the world is full of impoverished people. to maximise the benefit of your actions. Act utilitarianism is a teleological ethical theory propounded by Jeremy Bentham. Critics claim that the argument for using our money to help impoverished strangers rather than benefiting ourselves and people we care about only proves one thing—that act utilitarianism is false. In this short essay two types of utilitarianism are discussed.1. In 1956, Urmson (1953) published an influential article arguing that Mill justified rules on utilitarian principles. Act utilitarians acknowledge that it may be useful to have moral rules that are “rules of thumb”—i.e., rules that describe what is generally right or wrong, but they insist that whenever people can do more good by violating a rule rather than obeying it, they should violate the rule. Moreover, though this is more controversial, rule utilitarians may support a rule that says that if parents are financially well-off and if their own children’s needs are fully met, these parents may have a moral duty to contribute some resources for children who are deprived of essential resources. They argue that it is a mistake to treat whole classes of actions as right or wrong because the effects of actions differ when they are done in different contexts and morality must focus on the likely effects of individual actions. For these reasons, partiality toward specific children can be impartially justified. 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. Northeastern University This volume contains selections from his books and articles. Justifications of moral rules, he claims, must be strictly impartial. 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