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In Mill’s book he presents the ideology that there is another branch on the utilitarian tree. This branch being called rule-utilitarianism. Mill makes a distinction between two different types of utilitarianism; act-utilitarianism and rule-utilitarianism. Rule-utilitarianism seems like a major advance over the simple theory of act-utilitarianism. But for all its added complexity, it may not actually be a significant improvement. This is proven when looking at the flaws in act-utilitarianism and relating them to the ways in which rule-utilitarianism tries to overcome them. As well one must look at the obstacles that rule-utilitarianism has on it’s own as a theory. The problems of both act and rule utilitarianism consist of being too permissive and being able to justify any crime, not being able to predict the outcomes of one’s actions, non-universality and the lose of freewill. Act-utilitarianism is a theory suggesting that actions are right if their utility or product is at least as great as anything else that could be done in the situation or circumstance. Despite Mill’s conviction that act-utilitarianism is an acceptable and satisfying moral theory there are recognized problems. The main objection to act-utilitarianism is that it seems to be too permissive, capable of justifying any crime, and even making it morally obligatory to do so. This theory gives rise to the idea that the value of a particular action is based completely upon the consequences of that action. This however, cannot be true in many of cases. In the instance when an individual steals from another individual for his/her own self-happiness, others in society cannot deem this to be justifiable, even if it may be more beneficial to the thief to steal. Act-utilitarianism does not guarantee the protection to the victim of theft in this example because, it’s more focused on the greatest happiness and not on the consequences for others’ happiness. The greatest happiness may be given to either person in this situation depending on ‘the stories’ of each (i.e. the reason for thief). Therefore, the idea of right seems not to be absolute. Mill however, recognizes this as a problem and introduces the theory of rule-utilitarianism to compensate. Instead of looking at the consequences of a particular act, rule-utilitarianism determines the rightness of an act by an alternative mean. That mean consists of first finding the best rule of conduct, this is done by finding the values of the consequences that follow a particular rule; The best rule is the rule, which has the greatest overall result of any given action. Hence, one must follow the actual rules of one’s society. To illustrate, ‘one ought not to steal’ because it is societies laws. Solving the issue of not recognizing the victims happiness due to the fact, according to Mill, that these laws are based on morally right objectives. However, rule-utilitarianism is just an impotent way around the problem presented by the simple theory of act-utilitarianism, and poses more problems and objections as its own theory. Another problem of act-utilitarianism is that it seems better in theory than in practice, since one hardly ever has the time and the knowledge to predict the consequences of one’s act, assess their value, and make comparisons with possible alternative acts. Take the example of seeing someone being mugged. What would be the morally right thing to do? In this situation there would be no way in knowing 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 doesn’t emend to all of act-utilitarianism’s flaws. As mentioned before rule-utilitarianism has flaws of it’s own. An objection to rule-utilitarianism is that it is not universal. This problem lies in the fact that not all societies or groups are equal in terms of having the same morals, beliefs and experiences. For example, some time ago it was suitable to own slaves. It was a common practice in ancient Rome, so much so that the number of slaves one owned often was an indication of how wealthy one was. Presently, in modern western society, it is reputed as amoral, unjust and cruel to hold slaves, so much so that there are laws that govern such actions. Rule-utilitarianism does not take into consideration that the rules that govern a society may be in them-selves deeply unjust. Owning slaves would have seems a norm in ancient Rome but presently it is not, rule-utilitarianism therefore cannot be justified as consistent throughout changing social idealisms. Rule-utilitarianism is suppose to be a basic principle of moral believes, time however, seems to change the moral beliefs of a society and in doing so changes the rules or laws and thus rule-utilitarianism is not universal as a principle. Another example of this non-universality is with different individual believes. Such as those that are races, or sexist. These individuals may be acting on a religious belief and according to rule-utilitarianism those are the ‘self-evident’ rules that one is to judge their actions upon. Not everyone has the same rules; this causes contradiction in the theory making it non-universal. By not being universal the theory cannot exist as a standard. To further amplify this non-universality let’s look at yet another example, assume that for every country, the rule was to keep to the right of the road. One ought to keep to the right according to rule-utilitarianism. But if I went to England and see that the people there drive on the left (thus keeping to the left of the road) should one keep to the right? According to rule-utilitarianism one ought to keep to the right, proving rule-utilitarianism not to be universal. Hence there are many examples to prove that rule-utilitarianism is not universal and can therefore not exist as a constant principle. Rule-utilitarianism has other objections, one of these objections is that it does not allow for freewill. By following the actual rules of one’s society one is simply conforming to the ideals of others thereby not expressing their individual freewill. For example, “one ought not to murder another”. There is no absolute moral law in Mill’s argument that says this is right or wrong, moral or unjust. Act-utilitarianism says to look at the greatest happiness, and rule-utilitarianism says to look at societal rules. By looking at the greatest happiness, it has already been determined that the greatest happiness may lie on either side so one ought to look at social rule. By obeying these rules one conforms and does not murder because others deem it as wrong or immoral to do so, thereby not expressing their own freewill. This is not to say that murdering is morally right, it is just explaining that freewill is absent in the utilitarian standpoint. Ergo, rule- utilitarianism does not allow for an individual’s freewill because it tells one to examine others rules, or beliefs and not one’s own. Thereby conforming to sociality. In Mill’s book Utilitarianism he makes a distinction between act and rule-utilitarianism. Both types of utilitarianism are not without great flaw and therefore cannot exist as a base for moral principle. By adding the branch of rule-utilitarianism to the utilitarian tree Mill tries to compensate for some of act-utilitarian’s flaws but as seen rule-utilitarianism has it’s own objections and does not improve on the simple of act-utilitarianism thought out by previous philosophers. Rule-utilitarianism just patches-up some of act-utilitarian holes only it does not cover the entire thing. Therefore utilitarianism is not a good theory for moral rightness. Bibliography: Word Count: 1625
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