Examples Of Rule Utilitarianism

We’ve seen that rule utilitarianism solves four out of five of the problems afflicting act utilitarianism. This isn’t bad. But does it have any problems of its own? I think it does, and I think the problems are related to the two questions that rule utilitarian would have us ask in order to assess the moral worth of any action. A Problem with Question 1 As we’ve seen, the first question rule utilitarianism has us ask is “What general rule would I be following if I did this particular action?” And you might have already noticed that it’s often very hard to determine what rule is being followed, and a single action could be understood as conforming to different rules which differ in their utility. Suppose, for example, that a friend asks
But this question seems to have another, deeper, problem: even when we do know what rule we would be following, this question can sometimes be ethically irrelevant. Suppose, for example, that a friend of yours wonders whether or not it would be ethical to intentionally torture and execute innocent people in order to curb the crime rate. And suppose that you want to convince your friend that she’s wrong, so you take her to a rule utilitarian for some ethical counseling. “Would it be morally right or morally wrong to intentionally torture and execute innocent people in order to curb the crime rate?” you ask the rule utilitarian. “Well…” says the rule utilitarian, “let’s see. What rule would you be following if you did this? Presumably, something like ‘Torture and kill innocent people if it will reduce crime.’” “Exactly!” you agree, looking at your friend and thinking that you’ve won already. “Okay,” the rule utilitarian continues, “Now we need to decide if this rule would maximize happiness if generally practiced. I’m not a social psychologist, so I’m not sure. Let me speak to some of my psychologist friends and get back to you. They’ll be able to give us the data we