module 5: Intro to Act Utilitarianism and Rule Utilitarianism Flashcards
How do contemporary Utilitarians attempt to rescue Classical Utilitarianism?
Contemporary Utilitarians bite the bullet on the problem of not being able to select an alternative good to replace pleasure as the good to be maximized
Act Utilitarianism
An action is morally right if and only if it produces the best possible outcomes given the situation for the most amount of people
- is strictly interested in producing the “best outcome” whatever it is, in a given scenario
- pleasure is replaced with best outcome
Intuition test on Act Utilitarianism
Trolley Problem
-a thought experiment which challenges AU by illustrating how AU cannot account for some of our key moral intuitions
Trolley Problem 1
Should you pull the lever
- read essay for explanation
Trolley Problem 2
should you pull the lever considering the identity of the people on the track
what does the critique of the trolley problem aim to show
aims to show that AU cannot account for our strong and informed moral intuitions (CMJ) about special relationships or “the importance of partiality” making it dubious as a moral theory
Utilitarian response
they could respond to intuitions from TP 2 and claim that our moral intuitions are imperfect and unreliable
- humans are not good at being objective
- moral intuitions are not reliable
- disagreement on moral matters based on intuition
response to Utilitarian defense
Our moral intuitions can be built into CMJ that are credible and established through a rigorous rational procedure of making moral intuitions coherent with a host of moral principles to establish that special relationships are morally important
Demandingness Critiques of AU
- Critique of the impartiality condition
- Act Utilitarianism is too impractical
- The Jim v Pedro Dilemma (The problem with negative responsibility)
- AU conflicts with rights and justice
- Utilitarianism undermines the importance of Backward looking considerations
- Critique of the Impartiality Condition
asks if we should expect people to be as impartial (ignorant of identity) as AU wants them to be
- has to do with special relationships
response:
Utilitarians could say that partiality tends to lead to bad things so sacrificing it need not be so bad
eg. inequalities resulting from nepotism, wealthy favouring each other corruption
However partiality is still important function in society particularly in duties of care
Act Utilitarianism is too impractical
- has to do with usefulness in moral problem solving
- too taxing when we need it
The Jim and Pedro Dilemma
Look at essay
Utilitarianism and negative responsibility:
- AU says we are just as morally responsible for failing to prevent negative consequences as we are for causing bad consequences
- in the case of Jim and Pedro AU says doing nothing (not killing) is morally worse than murdering one person, it is therefore too demanding
Negative Responsibility
look at essay
- Act Utilitarianism conflicts with rights and justice
The Mc Closkey Case
- illustrates that AU conflicts with considerations of rights and justice
- someone wrongly accused of crime to save the peace
- Utilitarianism would say the morally right thing to do is to turn the innocent minority in and get them arrested to save the town from continued unrest
- arresting someone innocent entails violating that innocent persons personal rights; going to jail if you are innocent is in violation of personal liberties
response:
- arresting an innocent person would not actually maximize the best possible outcomes
- the Mc Closkey Case is hypothetical and can be contested
- however, it should still concern us because it is in the realm of possibility that the best outcomes could be maximized at the expense of rights and justice
- Utilitarianism undermines the importance of Backward looking considerations
it states that Utilitarianism could result in a situation where we can break away any promise if that results in the best outcomes
- this threatens moral significance of promise keeping practice.
Problem with Act Utilitarianism
- The problem might be applying the UC to individual actions
- whenever we do Utilitarianism Calculus on a particular action, we end up in a situation where actions are morally right, according to AU, but contradicts with our considered moral judgments
- scenario based Utilitarian Calculus makes it highly probable that the maximization of good consequences could conflict with CMJs and BAAM
- instead of focusing on the consequences of an action we should focus on the consequences of following a set of pre-established rules that align with our moral considerations
Rule Utilitarianism
states that:
- we should use UC to generate a set of rules which if followed generally result in the maximization of best outcomes for the greatest amount of people
- the morally right thing to do will be that which accords with the rules we have generated through UC
- RU moves away from considering scenario based consequences to focusing on the best possible outcomes of following a set of rules
How does RU resolve problems of demandingness faced by AU
- Impartiality
- Practicality
- Concerns about Rights and Justice
- Backward looking Considerations
- Concerns from the Jim and Pedro example
- Impartiality
- to deal with AU requiring us to be unduly impartial, RU can make a rule about special relationships that generally yields good consequences
- Practicality
- AU was impractical and required UC for every action
- doing UC on rules saves time because we can no calculate which rules produce the best outcomes beforehand
- ergo RU is more practical than AU
Concerns about Rights and Justice
- the Mc Closkey case showed that AU can result in injustice and infringement of rights because of prioritizing the best outcomes
- RU can endorse justice and right by instituting a rule based on justice and rights generally yielding good outcomes \
eg. we ought to preserve human rights and justice
- Backward looking considerations
AU undermines promise keeping practices
- in general RU could institute a rule saying that promises must always be kept
Concerns from the Jim and Pedro example
From the Jim and Pedro dilemma AU would require us to be morally responsible for things that we did not do or are out of our control (it is only concerned about consequences of an action)
- the dilemma shows that AU would consider Pedro as the one morally responsible
- however because Jims decision is tied to what Pedro does it is as if AU makes him responsible for what happens in the situation when he actually isnt
- this is the problem of negative responsibility which is to be made morally responsible for something we did not do
- negative responsibility goes against our background assumptions
- RU can fix the problem bu instituting a rule which resolves the problem of negative responsibility
eg. people ought to be held morally responsible for consequences that result from situations outside of their control or for things they did not do
what makes RU better than AU?
- The same action can have the same moral status across the board, no matter the scenario
- RU makes Utilitarianism more attuned with our moral intuitions because we can make up rules that are consistent with them
- RU is more consistent with justice and rights (background assumptions)
- RU is not as demanding as AU regarding impartiality, practicality and moral responsibility
Evaluating Rule Utilitarianism
a Utilitarian theory at its core is only concerned in maximizing the best consequences
- what happens when not following a rule yields the best outcome in a situation than following the rule
problem:
If we ignore the rule regardless of where they dont maximize the best outcomes are we not collapsing back into AU
Example following evaluation of RU
RULE: it is morally right to always keep our promises
- what if keeping a promise leads to bad outcomes? A rule that is unable to maximize consequences even in a particular situation is a problem for a Utilitarian theory
what are the solutions RU can use?
- Break the rule
- Keep adjusting the rule to fit the situation
- Follow the rule unconditionally
Option 1: Breaking the Utilitarian rules only if necessary
a rule Utilitarianist could say
- we should follow the rules however if the rules does not maximize utility, then we should maximize the good consequences rather than follow the rules
implications
- break the rules and it seems as though we are still prioritizing maximizing good consequences of the action whether or not there are rules
- RU collapses back into AU because you will no longer be guided by the consequences of following rules but the consequences of actions in a particular situation
Option 2: Adjusting the Utilitarian Rules by making exceptions
we could adjust or qualify the rules making exceptions to fit those scenarios
eg. people should not steal unless the hungry
- in this way we still maximize utility or best outcome
implication
- RU could adjust the rules ad infinitum until the rules just become as ad hoc as considering the individual actions consequences
- in this way we would still have to do UC in every scenario to see whether the rule maximizes good consequences which invites collapsing back into AU again
Option 3: follow the Utilitarian Rules regardless
For RU to work we need to follow the Utilitarian rules even if it does not lead to the best consequences in the specific situation
benefits:
- dont have to do UC for every action
- Utilitarianism would not morally require us to do intuitively immoral actions for the sake of producing the best consequences in a scenario
Implications
- we lose the central claim of Utilitarianism which is to maximize best outcomes
- it becomes more about following rules than maximizing best consequences which is deontological not consequentialist or teleological
