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 know...
