ing what would be the outcome of such a situation. The witness could never know why the mugger is mugging, and thus the witness could not know if it were for the greatest happiness to let the victim of the mugging be mugged or for the mugger to stopped. Let’s say the witness thought it would be right to try and stop the mugger. The mugger is then caught by police and put in jail. However, it was later found out that the mugger was going to use the money to feed his five hungry children, furthermore it was found out that the victim was a bitter old lady that didn’t care about anything in the world but her large amounts of money. What then would have been the morally right thing for the witness to do? Act-utilitarianism says the act that results in the greatest happiness is the morally right thing to do. The problem here lies in the fact that the witness hardly would have time to predict the consequences of his or her action nor does he or she have the knowledge of the entire situation to determine what is going to be the greater happiness. The question then remains is what would be the ‘right’ thing to do? What would result in the greatest happiness? There is no way for the witness to answer this question without knowing the entire situation in order to predict, and assess the results. In short there is no way of perceiving or measuring the degree of happiness because one cannot tell the future to judge the greatest happiness. Despite this flaw in act-utilitarianism, rule-utilitarianism does not compensate for it. Although rule-utilitarianism is suppose to be self-evident it still poses the some dilemma of having to assess, compare, and measure the happiness of the consequences. It only differs by adding a social rule into the equation. Meaning, instead of just thinking, assess and comparing one now ought to also consider what would be acceptable by his or her own society. Therefore rule-utilitarianism doesn̵...
