Rule Utilitarianism: Pros and Cons. Unlike act utilitarians, who try to maximize overall utility by applying the utilitarian principle to individual acts, rule utilitarians believe that we can maximize utility only by setting up a moral code that contains rules.

The utilitarian rule is that an ethical decision is a decision that produces the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

Mill defines utilitarianism as a theory based on the principle that “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” Mill defines happiness as pleasure and the absence of pain.

Moral decisions according to Rule Utilitarianism follow general maxims or rules which when adhered to achieve the maximum amount of pleasure or happiness. General rules such as ‘do not lie’, ‘do not murder’, ‘help out others in need’, should be followed and when they are the greatest good is achieved.

Rule utilitarians argue that following rules that tend to lead to the greatest good will have better consequences overall than allowing exceptions to be made in individual instances, even if better consequences can be demonstrated in those instances.

The idea behind Rule Utilitarianism is that whenever you are in a situation and have alternatives you calculate the utility to be produced by adopting a course of action (rule) which would produce the greatest utility in the long run if it were followed every time that situation arose.

Which of the following do most utilitarians believe determines the morality of actions? The actual consequences of the action. Moral rules can be helpful but can be broken if doing so is optimific.

The main problem for total utilitarianism is the ” mere addition paradox “, which argues that a likely outcome of following total utilitarianism is a future where there is a large number of people with very low utility values. Parfit terms this “the repugnant conclusion”, believing it to be intuitively undesirable.

Rule utilitarianism. Rule utilitarianism is a form of utilitarianism that says an action is right as it conforms to a rule that leads to the greatest good, or that “the rightness or wrongness of a particular action is a function of the correctness of the rule of which it is an instance.”.

The primary goal of utilitarianism is to maximize utility. How that’s done or measured is a disputed issue.

15 Interesting Utilitarianism Pros and Cons Pros of Utilitarianism. We get to base our primary focus on the satisfaction of society. Cons of Utilitarianism. This theory does not consider any other element besides happiness. As a way of determining an action’s morality and ethics, Utilitarian only focuses on majority happiness. Sources