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For rule utilitarians, the correctness of a rule is determined by the amount of good it brings about when followed. In contrast, act utilitarians judge an act in terms of the consequences of that act alone (such as stopping at a red light), rather than judging whether it faithfully adhered to the rule of which it was an instance (such as ...
The utilitarian rule then allocates the wood in a way that maximizes the number of buildings. Consider a problem of allocating a rare medication among patients. The utility functions may represent their chance of recovery – u i ( y i ) {\displaystyle u_{i}(y_{i})} is the probability of agent i {\displaystyle i} to recover by getting y i ...
Rosen (2003) warns that descriptions of utilitarianism can bear "little resemblance historically to utilitarians like Bentham and J. S. Mill" and can be more "a crude version of act utilitarianism conceived in the twentieth century as a straw man to be attacked and rejected." [25] It is a mistake to think that Bentham is not concerned with ...
The set of intuitive moral rules that the prole follows must be simple and general enough that they can be easily understood and memorised, and also quick and easy to use. [citation needed] Once one has identified the different types of moral thinking, the next step is to identify when one ought to think like an archangel, and when like a prole.
Rule utilitarianism states that the morally right action is the one that is in accordance with a moral rule whose general observance would create the most happiness. Act utilitarianism evaluates an act by its actual consequences whereas rule utilitarianism evaluates an action by the consequences of its general or universal practice (by all ...
Rule utilitarians (or at least, some rule utilitarians) argue, pace act utilitarians, that when one is faced with a decision between maximizing utility and following a rule that has been put in place due to its tendency to maximize utility, you follow the rule. To give the stock example, even if a student could convince me that by giving him a ...
tempts people to disobey ordinary moral rules (by inviting them to ignore such rules when they appear to conflict with the general happiness) (p. 37) In response to the charge that utilitarianism is a doctrine fit only for swine, Mill abandons Bentham's view that pleasures differ only in quantity, not quality.
Smart's arguments against rule utilitarianism have been very influential, contributing to a steady decline in its popularity among ethicists during the late 20th century. Worldwide, his defence of act utilitarianism and preference theory has been less prominent but has influenced philosophers who have worked or been educated in Australia, such ...