Examples Of Act Utilitarianism

When presented with the issue of whether the sheriff should hand over an innocent man to avoid a riot and the death of innocent people, a utilitarian’s stance seems obvious at face value. However, it is much more complex than that. To be able to come to a decision about what should be done, one must first understand what stance a utilitarian takes on justice in this circumstance. The first thing that must be recognized is the fact that there are two types of utilitarianism in instances concerning overall justice. Julia Driver mentions this in her book Ethics: The Fundamentals. Driver posits that there is a difference between act-utilitarianism and rule-utilitarianism (Driver 64). Act-utilitarianism deals more with what classical utilitarianism believes. It follows the belief that one should choose the action that has the best outcome for the most amount of people, even if it means
Act-utilitarianism seems to ignore the morality or justice that some actions violate. In this instance, it is not just to hang Bob because he is innocent, but doing so would maximize pleasure by saving more people. Rule-utilitarianism seems to solve this problem by giving rules that creates instances in which saving Bob would maximize pleasure because that would be following a rule that is considered good by most of society. However, there are two problems when it comes to rule-utilitarianism. One problem is the fact that it leads to rule-worship, whereas people will accept only the rule and no exceptions, even if it means causing harm (Driver 65). On the other side of the spectrum, people begin making exceptions to the rule so that it will include instances that the rule does not specifically note to begin with. This is the second problem. After a while, so many exceptions are made that it turns into act-utilitarianism in the sense that it seeks to find the situation that maximizes utility, which is exactly what act-utilitarianism