Hooker, "Rule Consequentialism"

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Rule Consequentialism
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First published Wed Dec 31, 2003; substantive revision Wed Nov 18, 2015
The theory of morality we can call full rule-consequentialism selects rules
solely in terms of the goodness of their consequences and then claims that
these rules determine which kinds of acts are morally wrong. George
Berkeley was arguably the first rule-consequentialist. He wrote, “In
framing the general laws of nature, it is granted we must be entirely
guided by the public good of mankind, but not in the ordinary moral
actions of our lives. … The rule is framed with respect to the good of
mankind; but our practice must be always shaped immediately by the
rule.” (Berkeley 1712: section 31) Writers often classified as ruleconsequentialists include Austin 1832; Harrod 1936; Toulmin 1950;
Urmson 1953; Harrison 1953; Mabbott 1953; M. Singer 1955, 1961; and
most influentially Brandt 1959, 1963, 1967, 1979, 1989, 1996; and
Harsanyi 1977, 1982, 1993. See also Rawls 1955; Ezorsky 1968; Ihara
1981; Haslett 1987, 1994: ch. 1, 2000; Attfield 1987: 103–12; Barrow
1991: ch. 6; 2015; Johnson 1991; Riley 2000; Shaw 1999; Hooker 2000,
2005; Mulgan, 2006, 2009; Ridge 2006; R.B. Miller 2009; Parfit 2011;
Cowen 2011; Kahn 2012, 2013; Levy 2013; Tobia 2013; and D.E. Miller
2014. Whether J.S. Mill’s ethics was rule-consequentialist is controversial
(Urmson 1953; Lyons 1994: 47–65; Crisp 1997: 102–33; D.E. Miller
2010: 79–110).
1. Utilitarianism
2. Welfare
3. Other Goods To Be Promoted
4. Full Rule-consequentialism
5. Global Consequentialism
6. Formulating Full Rule-consequentialism
6.1 Actual versus Expected Good
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6.2 Compliance and Acceptance
6.3 Complete Acceptance versus Incomplete Acceptance
7. Three Ways of Arguing for Rule-consequentialism
8. Must Rule-consequentialism Be Guilty of Collapse, Incoherence,
or Rule-worship?
9. Other Objections to Rule-consequentialism
Bibliography
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1. Utilitarianism
A moral theory is a form of consequentialism if and only if it assesses acts
and/or character traits, practices, and institutions solely in terms of the
goodness of the consequences. Historically, utilitarianism has been the
best-known form of consequentialism. Utilitarianism assesses acts and/or
character traits, practices, and institutions solely in terms of overall net
benefit. Overall net benefit is often referred to as aggregate well-being or
welfare. Aggregate welfare is calculated by counting a benefit or harm to
any one individual the same as the same size benefit or harm to any other
individual, and then adding all the benefits and harms together to reach an
aggregate sum. There is considerable dispute among consequentialists
about what the best account of welfare is.
2. Welfare
Classical utitilitarians (i.e., Jeremy Bentham, J.S. Mill, and Henry
Sidgwick) took benefit and harm to be purely a matter of pleasure and
pain. The view that welfare is a matter of pleasure minus pain has
generally been called hedonism. It has grown in sophistication (Parfit
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1984: Appendix I; Sumner 1996; Crisp 2006; de Lazari-Radek and Singer
2014: ch. 9) but remains committed to the thesis that how well someone’s
life goes depends entirely on his or her pleasure minus pain, albeit with
pleasure and pain being construed very broadly.
Even if pleasures and pains are construed very broadly, hedonism
encounters difficulties. The main one is that many (if not all) people care
very strongly about things other than their own pleasures and pains. Of
course these other things can be important as means to pleasures and to the
avoidance of pain. But many people care very strongly about things over
and beyond their hedonistic instrumental value. For example, many people
want to know the truth about various matters even if this won’t increase
their (or anyone else’s) pleasure. Another example is that many people
care about achieving things over and beyond the pleasure such
achievements might produce. Again, many people care about the welfare
of their family and friends in a non-instrumental way. A rival account of
these points, especially the last, is that people care about many things
other than their own welfare.
On any plausible view of welfare, the satisfaction people can feel when
their desires are fulfilled constitutes an addition to their welfare. Likewise,
on any plausible view, frustration felt as a result of unfulfilled desires
constitutes a reduction in welfare. What is controversial is whether the
fulfilment of someone’s desire constitutes a benefit to that person apart
from any effect that the fulfilment of the desire has on that person’s felt
satisfaction or frustration. Hedonism answers No, claiming that only
effects on felt satisfaction or felt frustration matter.
A different theory of welfare answers Yes. This theory holds that the
fulfilment of any desire of the agent’s constitutes a benefit to the agent,
even if the agent never knows that desire has been fulfilled and even if the
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agent derives no pleasure from its fulfilment. This theory of human
welfare is often referred to as the desire-fulfillment theory of welfare.
Clearly, the desire-fulfillment theory of welfare is broader than hedonism,
in that the desire-fulfillment theory accepts that what can constitute a
benefit is wider than merely pleasure. But there are reasons for thinking
that this broader theory is too broad. For one thing, people can have
sensible desires that are simply too disconnected from their own lives to
be relevant to their own welfare (Williams 1973: 262; Overvold 1980,
1982; Parfit 1984: 494). I desire that the starving in far-away countries get
food. But the fulfilment of this desire of mine does not benefit me.
For another thing, people can have desires for absurd things for
themselves. Suppose I desire to count all the blades of grass in the lawns
on this road. If I get satisfaction out of doing this, the felt satisfaction
constitutes a benefit to me. But the bare fulfilment of my desire to count
all the blades of grass in the lawns on this road does not (Rawls 1971: 432;
Parfit 1984: 500; Crisp 1997: 56).
On careful reflection, we might think that the fulfilment of someone’s
desire constitutes an addition to that person’s welfare only if that desire
has one of a certain set of contents. We might think, for example, that the
fulfilment of someone’s desire for pleasure, friendship, knowledge,
achievement, or autonomy for herself does constitute an addition to her
welfare, and that the fulfilment of any desires she might have for others
things do not directly benefit her (though, again, the pleasure she derives
from their satisfaction does). If we think this, it seems we think there is a
list of things that constitute anyone’s welfare (Parfit 1984: Appendix I;
Brink 1989: 221–36; Griffin 1996: ch. 2; Crisp 1997: ch. 3; Gert 1998:
92–4; Arneson 1999a).
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Insofar as the goods to be promoted are parts of welfare, the theory
remains utilitarian. There is a lot to be said for utilitarianism. Obviously,
how lives go is important. And there is something deeply attractive (if not
downright irresistible) in the idea that morality is fundamentally impartial,
i.e., the idea that, at the most fundamental level of morality, everyone is
equally important — women and men, strong and weak, rich and poor,
Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, Asians, etc. And utilitarianism plausibly
interprets this equal importance as dictating that in the calculation of
overall welfare a benefit or harm to any one individual counts neither more
nor less that the same size benefit or harm to any other individual.
3. Other Goods To Be Promoted
The nonutilitarian members of the consequentialist family are theories that
assess acts and/or character traits, practices, and institutions solely in
terms of resulting good, where good is not restricted to welfare.
“Nonutilitarian” here means “not purely utilitarian”, rather than
“completely unutilitarian”. When writers describe themselves as
consequentialists rather than as utilitarians, they are normally signalling
that their fundamental evaluations will be in terms of not only welfare but
also some other goods.
What are these other goods? The most common answers have been justice,
fairness, and equality.
Justice, according to Plato, is “rendering to each his due” (Republic, Bk.
1). We might suppose that what people are due is a matter of what people
are owed, either because they deserve it or because they have a moral right
to it. Suppose we plug these ideas into consequentialism. Then we get the
theory that things should be assessed in terms of not only how much
welfare results but also the extent to which people get what they deserve
and the extent to which moral rights are respected.
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For consequentialism to take this line, however, is for it to restrict its
explanatory ambitions. What a theory simply presupposes, it does not
explain. A consequentialist theory that presupposes both that justice is
constituted by such-and-such and that justice is one of the things to be
promoted does not explain why the components of justice are important. It
does not explain what desert is. It does not explain the importance of
moral rights, much less try to determine what the contents of these moral
rights are. These are matters too important and contentious for a
consequentialist theory to leave unexplained or open. If consequentialism
is going to refer to justice, desert, and moral rights, it needs to analyze
these concepts and justify the role it gives them.
Similar things can be said about fairness. If a consequentialist theory
presupposes an account of fairness, and simply stipulates that fairness is to
be promoted, then this consequentialist theory is not explaining fairness.
But fairness (like justice, desert, and moral rights) is a concept too
important for consequentialism not to try to explain.
One way for consequentialists to deal with justice and fairness is to
contend that justice and fairness are constituted by conformity with a
certain set of justified social practices, and that what justifies these
practices is that they generally promote overall welfare and equality.
Indeed, the contention might be that what people are due, what people
have a moral right to, what justice and fairness require, is conformity to
whatever practices promote overall welfare and equality.
Whether equality needs to be included in the formula, however, is very
controversial. Many think that a purely utilitarian formula has sufficiently
egalitarian implications. They think that, even if the goal is promotion of
welfare, not the promotion of welfare-plus-equality, there are some
contingent but pervasive facts about human beings that push in the
direction of equal distribution of material resources (Brandt 1979).
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According to the “law of diminishing marginal utility of material
resources”, the amount of benefit a person gets out of a certain unit of
material resources is less the more units of that material good the person
already has. Suppose I go from having no way of getting around except by
foot to having a bicycle, or, though I live in a place where one can get very
cold, I go from having no warm coat to having one. I will benefit more
from getting that first bicycle or coat than I would if I go from having nine
bicycles or coats to having ten.
There are exceptions to the law of diminishing marginal utility. In most of
these exceptions, an additional unit of material resource pushes someone
over some important threshold. For example, consider the meal or pill or
gulp of air that saves someone’s life, or the car whose acquisition pushes
the competitive collector into first place. In such cases, the unit that puts
the person over the threshold might well be as beneficial to that person as
any prior unit was. Still, as a general rule, material resources do have
diminishing marginal utility.
To the assumption that material resources have diminishing marginal
utility, let us add the assumption that different people generally get
roughly the same benefits from the same material resources. Again, there
are exceptions. If you live in a freezing climate and I live in a hot climate,
then you would benefit much more from a warm coat than I would.
But suppose we live in the same place, which has freezing winters, good
paths for riding bicycles, and no public transportation. And suppose you
have ten bicycles and ten coats (though you are not vying for some
bicycle- or coat-collector prize). Meanwhile, I am so poor that I have
none. Then, redistributing one of your bicycles and one of your coats to
me will probably harm you less than it will benefit me. This sort of
phenomenon pervades societies where resources are unequally distributed.
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Wherever the phenomenon occurs, a fundamentally impartial morality is
under pressure to redistribute resources from the richer to the poorer.
However, there are also contingent but pervasive facts about human beings
that pull in favor of practices that have the foreseen consequence of
material inequality. First of all, higher levels of overall welfare can require
higher levels of productivity (think of the welfare gains resulting from
improvements in agricultural productivity). In many areas of the economy,
the provision of material rewards for greater productivity seems the most
efficient acceptable way of eliciting higher productivity. Some individuals
and groups will be more productive than others (especially if there are
incentive schemes). So the practice of providing material rewards for
greater productivity will result in material inequality.
Thus, on the one hand, the diminishing marginal utility of material
resources exerts pressure in favor of more equal distributions of resources.
On the other hand, the need to promote productivity exerts pressure in
favor of incentive schemes that have the foreseen consequence of material
inequality. Utilitarians and most other consequentialists find themselves
balancing these opposed pressures.
Note that those pressures concern the distribution of resources. There is a
further question about how equally welfare itself should be distributed.
Many recent writers have taken utilitarianism to be indifferent about the
distribution of welfare. Imagine a choice between an outcome where
overall welfare is large but distributed unequally and an outcome where
overall welfare is smaller but distributed equally. Utilitarians are taken to
favor outcomes with greater overall welfare even if it is also less equally
distributed.
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To illustrate this, let us take an artificially simple population, divided into
just two groups.
Total welfare for both
groups
Units of welfare
Per
person
Per group
10,000 people in
group A
1
10,000
100,000 people in
group B
10
1,000,000
Alternative 1
Impartially calculated:
1,010,000
Units of welfare
Alternative 2
groups
Per
Per
person group
10,000 people in
group A
8
80,000
100,000 people in
group B
9
900,000
Impartially
980,000
calculated:
Many people would think Alternative 2 above better than Alternative 1,
and might think that the comparison between these alternatives shows that
there is always pressure in favor of greater equality of welfare.
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As Derek Parfit (1997) in particular has argued, however, we must not be
too hasty. Consider the following choice:
Units of welfare
Alternative 1
groups
Per
Per group
person
10,000 people in
group A
1
10,000
100,000 people in
group B
10
1,000,000
1,010,000
Units of welfare
Alternative 3
groups
Per
Per group
person
10,000 people in
group A
1
10,000
100,000 people in
group B
1
100,000
110,000
Is equality of welfare so important that Alternative 3 is superior to
Alternative 1? To take an example of Parfit’s, suppose the only way to
make everyone equal with respect to sight is to make everyone totally
blind. Is such “levelling down” required by morality? Indeed, is it in any
way at all morally desirable?
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If we think the answer is No, then we might think that equality of welfare
as such is not really an ideal (cf. Temkin 1993). Losses to the better off are
justified only where this benefits the worse off. What we had thought of as
pressure in favor of equality of welfare was instead pressure in favor of
levelling up. We might say that additions to welfare matter more the worse
off the person is whose welfare is affected. This view has come to be
called prioritarianism (Parfit 1997; Arneson 1999b). It has tremendous
intuitive appeal.
For a simplistic example of how prioritarianism might work, suppose the
welfare of the worst off counts five times as much as the welfare of the
better off. Then Alternative 1 from the tables above comes out at
(1 × 5 × 10, 000) + (10 × 100, 000) , which comes to 1,050,000 total
units of welfare. Again with the welfare of the worst off counting five
times
as
much,
Alternative
2
comes
out
at
(8 × 5 × 10, 000) + (9 × 100, 000) , which comes to 1,300,000 total units
of welfare. This accords with the common reaction that Alternative 2 is
morally superior to Alternative 1.
Of course in real examples there is never only one division in society.
Rather there is a scale from the worst off, to the not quite so badly off, and
so on up to the best off. Prioritarianism is committed to variable levels of
importance of the welfare of people at different places on this scale: the
worse off a person is, the greater the importance attached to that person’s
level of welfare.
This raises two serious worries about prioritarianism. The first concerns
prioritarianism’s difficulty in nonarbitrarily determining how much more
importance to give to the welfare of the worse off. For example, should a
unit of benefit to the worst off count 10 times the same size benefit to the
best off and 5 times the same size benefit to the averagely well off? Or
should the multipliers be 20 and 10, or 4 and 2? The second worry about
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prioritarianism is whether attaching greater importance to increases in
welfare for some than to the same size increases in welfare for others
contradicts fundamental impartiality (Hooker 2000: 60–2).
This is not the place to go further into debates between prioritarianism and
its critics. So the rest of this article sets aside those debates.
4. Full Rule-consequentialism
Consequentialists have distinguished three components of their theory: (1)
their thesis about what makes acts morally wrong, (2) their thesis about
the procedure agents should use to make their moral decisions, and (3)
their thesis about the conditions under which moral sanctions such as
blame, guilt, and praise are appropriate.
What we might call full rule-consequentialism consists of ruleconsequentialist criteria for all three. Thus, full rule-consequentialism
claims that an act is morally wrong if and only if it is forbidden by rules
justified by their consequences. It also claims that agents should do their
moral decision-making in terms of rules justified by their consequences.
And it claims that the conditions under which moral sanctions should be
applied are determined by rules justified by their consequences.
Full rule-consequentialists may think that there is really only one set of
rules about these three different subject matters. Or they may think that
there are different sets that in some sense correspond to or complement
one another.
Much more important than the distinction between different kinds of full
rule-consequentialism is the distinction between full rule-consequentialism
and partial rule-consequentialism. Partial rule-consequentialism might
take many forms. Let us focus on the most common form. The most
common form of partial rule-consequentialism claims that agents should
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make their moral decisions about what to do by reference to rules justified
by their consequences, but does not claim that moral wrongness is
determined by rules justified by their consequences. Partial ruleconsequentialists typically subscribe to the theory that moral wrongness is
determined directly in terms of the consequences of the act. This theory of
wrongness is called act-consequentialism.
Distinguishing between full and partial rule-consequentialism clarifies the
contrast between act-consequentialism and rule-consequentialism. Actconsequentialism is best conceived of as maintaining merely the
following:
Act-consequentialist criterion of wrongness: An act is wrong if and
only if it results in less good than would have resulted from some
available alternative act.
When confronted with that criterion of moral wrongness, many people
naturally assume that the way to decide what to do is to apply the
criterion, i.e.,
Act-consequentialist moral decision procedure: On each occasion,
an agent should decide what to do by calculating which act would
produce the most good.
However, consequentialists nearly never defend this act-consequentialist
decision procedure as a general and typical way of making moral
decisions (Mill 1861: ch 2; Sidgwick 1907: 405–6, 413, 489–90; Moore
1903: 162–4; Smart 1956: 346; 1973: 43, 71; Bales 1971: 257–65; Hare
1981; Parfit 1984: 24–9, 31–43; Railton 1984: 140–6, 152–3; Brink 1989:
216–7, 256–62, 274–6; Pettit and Brennan 1986; Pettit 1991, 1994, 1997:
156–61); de Lazari-Radek and Singer 2014: ch. 10. There are a number of
compelling consequentialist reasons why the act-consequentialist decision
procedure would be counter-productive.
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First, very often the agent does not have detailed information about what
the consequences would be of various acts.
Second, obtaining such information would often involve greater costs than
are at stake in the decision to be made.
Third, even if the agent had the information needed to make calculations,
the agent might make mistakes in the calculations. (This is especially
likely when the agent’s natural biases intrude, or when the calculations are
complex, or when they have to be made in a hurry.)
Fourth, there are what we might call expectation effects. Imagine a society
in which people know that others are naturally biased towards themselves
and towards their loved ones but are trying to make their every moral
decision by calculating overall good. In such a society, each person might
well fear that others will go around breaking promises, stealing, lying, and
even assaulting whenever they convinced themselves that such acts would
produce the greatest overall good. In such a society, people would not feel
they could trust one another.
This fourth consideration is more controversial than the first three. For
example, Hodgson 1967, Hospers 1972, and Harsanyi 1982 argue that
trust would break down. Singer 1972 and Lewis 1972 argue that it would
not.
Nevertheless, most philosophers accept that, for all four of the reasons
above, using an act-consequentialist decision procedure would not
maximize the good. Hence even philosophers who espouse the actconsequentialist criterion of moral wrongness reject the actconsequentialist moral decision procedure. In its place, they typically
advocate the following:
Rule-consequentialist decision procedure: At least normally, agents
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should decide what to do by applying rules whose acceptance will
produce the best consequences, rules such as “Don’t harm innocent
others”, “Don’t steal or vandalize others’ property”, “Don’t break
your promises”, “Don’t lie”, “Pay special attention to the needs of
your family and friends”, “Do good for others generally”.
Since act-consequentialists about the criterion of wrongness typically
accept this decision procedure, act-consequentialists are in fact partial
rule-consequentialists. Often, what writers refer to as indirect
consequentialism is this combination of act-consequentialism about
wrongness and rule-consequentialism about the appropriate decision
procedure.
Standardly, the decision procedure that full rule-consequentialism
endorses is the one that it would be best for society to accept. The
qualification “standardly” is needed because there are versions of ruleconsequentialism that let the rules be relativised to small groups or even
individuals (D.E. Miller 2010; Kahn 2012). And act-consequentialism
insists upon the decision procedure it would be best for the individual to
accept. So, according to act-consequentialism, since Jack’s and Jill’s
capacities and situations may be very different, the best decision
procedures for Jack to accept may be different from the best decision
procedure for Jill to accept. However, in practice act-consequentialists
typically ignore for the most part such differences and endorse the above
rule-consequentialist decision procedure (Hare 1981, chs. 2, 3, 8, 9, 11;
Levy 2000).
When act-consequentialists endorse the above rule-consequentialist
decision procedure, they acknowledge that following this decision
procedure does not guarantee that we will do the act with the best
consequences. Sometimes, for example, our following a decision
procedure that rules out harming an innocent person will prevent us from
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doing that act that would produce the best consequences. Similarly, there
will be some circumstances in which stealing, breaking our promises, etc.,
would produce the best consequences. Still, our following a decision
procedure that generally rules out such acts will in the long run and on the
whole probably produce far better consequences than our trying to run
consequentialist calculations on an act-by-act basis.
Because act-consequentialists typically agree with a rule-consequentialist
decision procedure, whether to classify some philosopher as an actconsequentialist or as a rule-consequentialist can be problematic. For
example, G.E. Moore (1903, 1912) is sometimes classified as an actconsequentialist and sometimes as a rule-consequentialist. Like so many
others, including his teacher Henry Sidgwick, Moore combined an actconsequentialist criterion of moral wrongness with a rule-consequentialist
procedure for deciding what to do. Moore simply went further than most
in stressing the danger of departing from the rule-consequentialist decision
procedure (see Shaw 2000).
5. Global Consequentialism
Some writers propose that the purest and most consistent form of
consequentialism is the view that absolutely everything should be assessed
by its consequences, including not only acts but also rules, motives, the
imposition of sanctions, etc. Let us follow Pettit and Smith (2000) in
referring to this view as global consequentialism. Kagan (2000) pictures it
as multi-dimensional direct consequentialism, in that each thing is
assessed directly in terms of whether its own consequences are as good as
the consequences of alternatives.
How does this global consequentialism differ from what we have been
calling partial rule-consequentialism? What we have been calling partial
rule-consequentialism is nothing but the combination of the act-
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consequentialist criterion of moral wrongness with the ruleconsequentialist decision procedure. So defined, partial ruleconsequentialism leaves open the question of when moral sanctions are
appropriate.
Some partial rule-consequentialists say that agents should be blamed and
feel guilty whenever they fail to choose an act that would result in the best
consequences. A much more reasonable position for a partial ruleconsequentialist to take is that agents should be blamed and feel guilty
whenever they choose an act that is forbidden by the rule-consequentialist
decision procedure, whether or not that individual act fails to result in the
best consequences. Finally, partial rule-consequentialism, as we have
defined it, is compatible with the claim that whether agents should be
blamed or feel guilty depends not on the wrongness of what they did, nor
on whether the recommended procedure for making moral decisions
would have led them to choose the act they choose, but instead solely on
whether this blame or guilt will do any good. This is precisely the view of
sanctions that global consequentialism takes.
One devastating objection to global consequentialism is that
simultaneously applying a consequentialist criterion to acts, decision
procedures, and the imposition of sanctions leads to apparent paradoxes
(Crisp 1992; Streumer 2003; Lang 2004).
Suppose, on the whole and in the long run, the best decision procedure for
you to accept is one that leads you to do act x now. But suppose also that
in fact the act with the best consequences in this situation is not x but y. So
global consequentialism tells you to use the best possible decision
procedure but also not to do the act picked out by this decision procedure.
That seems paradoxical.
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Things get worse when we consider blame and guilt. Suppose you follow
the best possible decision procedure but fail to do the act with the best
consequences. Are you to be blamed? Should you feel guilty? Global
consequentialism claims that you should be blamed if and only if blaming
you will produce the best consequences, and that you should feel guilty if
and only if this will produce the best consequences. Suppose that for some
reason the best consequences would result from blaming you for following
the prescribed decision procedure (and thus doing x). But surely it is
paradoxical for a moral theory to call for you to be blamed although you
followed the moral decision procedure mandated by the theory. Or
suppose that for some reason the best consequences would result from
blaming you for intentionally choosing the act with the best consequences
(y). Again, surely it is paradoxical for a moral theory to call for you to be
blamed although you intentionally chose the very act required by the
theory.
So one problem with global consequentialism is that it creates potential
gaps between what acts it claims to be required and what decision
procedures it tells agents to use, and between each of these and
blamelessness. (For explicit replies to this line of attack, see Driver 2014:
175 and de Lazari-Radek and Singer 2014: 315–16.)
That is not the most familiar problem with global consequentialism. The
most familiar problem with it is instead its maximising actconsequentialist criterion of wrongness. According to this maximising
criterion, an act is wrong if and only if it fails to result in the greatest
good. This criterion judges some acts to be not wrong which certainly
seem to be wrong. It also judges some acts that seem not wrong to be
wrong.
For example, consider an act of murder that results in slightly more good
than any other act would have produced. According to the most familiar,
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maximising act-consequentialist criterion of wrongness, this act of murder
is not wrong. Many other kinds of act such as assaulting, stealing, promise
breaking, and lying can be wrong even when doing them would produce
slightly more good than not doing them would. Again, the familiar,
maximising form of act-consequentialism denies this.
Or consider someone who gives to her child, or keeps for herself, some
resource of her own instead of contributing it to help some stranger who
would have gained slightly more from that resource. Such an action hardly
seems wrong. Yet the maximising act-consequentialist criterion judges it
to be wrong. Indeed, imagine how much self-sacrifice an averagely welloff person would have to make before her further actions satisfied the
maximising act-consequentialist criterion of wrongness. She would have
to give to the point where further sacrifices from her in order to benefit
others would harm her more than they would benefit the others. Thus, the
maximising act-consequentialist criterion of wrongness is often accused of
being unreasonably demanding.
The objections just directed at maximising act-consequentialism could be
side-stepped by a version of act-consequentialism that did not require
maximising the good. This sort of act-consequentialism is now called
satisficing
consequentialism.
See
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/ for more on such a
theory.
6. Formulating Full Rule-consequentialism
There are a number of different ways of formulating ruleconsequentialism. For example, it can be formulated in terms of the good
that actually results from rules or in terms of the rationally expected good
of the consequences of rules. It can be formulated in terms of the
consequences of compliance with rules or in terms of the wider
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consequences of acceptance of rules. It can be formulated in terms of the
consequences of absolutely everyone’s accepting the rules or in terms of
the rules’ acceptance by something less than everyone. Ruleconsequentialism is more plausible if formulated in some ways than it is if
formulated in other ways. This is explained in the following three
subsections. Questions of formulation are also relevant in the later section
on old objections to rule-consequentialism.
6.1 Actual versus Expected Good
As indicated, full rule-consequentialism consists in rule-consequentialist
answers to three questions. The first is, what makes acts morally wrong?
The second is, what procedure should agents use to make their moral
decisions? The third is, what are the conditions under which moral
sanctions such as blame, guilt, and praise are appropriate?
As we have seen, the answer that full rule-consequentialists give to the
question about decision procedure is the same as other kinds of
consequentialist give to that question. So let us focus on the points of
contrast, i.e., the other two questions. These two questions — about what
makes acts wrong and about when sanctions are appropriate — are more
tightly connected than sometimes realized.
Indeed, J.S. Mill, one of the fathers of consequentialism, affirmed their
tight connection:
We do not call anything wrong, unless we mean to imply that a
person ought to be punished in some way or other for doing it; if
not by law, by the opinion of his fellow creatures; if not by
opinion, by the reproaches of his own conscience. (1861: ch. 5,
para. 14)
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Let us assume that Mill took “ought to be punished, at least by one’s own
conscience if not by others” to be roughly the same as “blameworthy”.
With this assumption in hand, we can interpret Mill as tying wrongness
tightly to blameworthiness. In a moment, we can consider what follows if
Mill is mistaken that wrongness is tied tightly to blameworthiness. First,
let us consider what follows if Mill is correct that wrongness is tied tightly
to blameworthiness.
Consider the following argument, whose first premise comes from Mill:
If an act is wrong, it is blameworthy.
Surely, an agent cannot rightly be blamed for accepting and following
rules that the agent could not foresee would have sub-optimal
consequences. From this, we get our second premise:
If an act is blameworthy, the sub-optimal consequences of rules
allowing that act must have been foreseeable.
From these two premises we get the conclusion:
So if an act is wrong, the sub-optimal consequences of rules
allowing that act must have been foreseeable.
Of course, the actual consequences of accepting a set of rules may not be
the same as the foreseeable consequences of accepting that set. Hence, if
full rule-consequentialism claims that an act is wrong if and only if the
foreseeable consequences of rules allowing that act are sub-optimal, ruleconsequentialism cannot hold that an act is wrong if and only if the actual
consequences of rules allowing that act will be sub-optimal.
Now suppose instead the relation between wrongness and
blameworthiness is far looser than Mill suggested (cf. Sorensen 1996).
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That is, suppose that our criterion of wrongness can be quite different
from our criterion of blameworthiness. In that case, we could hold:
Actualist rule-consequentialist criterion of wrongness: An act is
wrong if and only if it is forbidden by rules the acceptance of
which would actually result in the greatest good.
and
Expectablist rule-consequentialist criterion of blameworthiness:
An act is blameworthy if and only if it is forbidden by the rules the
acceptance of which would result in the greatest expected good.
Here is how expected good of a set of rules is calculated. The acceptance
of a set of rules of course has various possible alternative outcomes.
Suppose we can identify the value or disvalue of each possible outcome.
Multiply the value of each possible outcome by the probability of that
outcome’s occurring. Take all the products of these multiplications and
add them together. The resulting number is the expected good of that set of
rules.
Note that expected good is not to be calculated by employing whatever
crazy estimates of probabilities people might assign to possible outcomes.
Rather, expected good is calculated by multiplying the value or disvalue of
possible outcomes by rational or justified probability estimates.
There might be considerable scepticism about how often such calculations
are possible. Where such calculations are possible, they will often be quite
impressionistic and imprecise. Nevertheless, we can reasonably hope to
make at least some informed judgements about the likely consequences of
alternative possible rules. And we could be guided by such judgements. In
contrast, which rules would actually have the very best consequences will
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normally be inaccessible. Hence, the expectablist rule-consequentialist
criterion of blameworthiness is appealing.
Now return to the proposal that, while the criterion of blameworthiness is
the expectablist rule-consequentialist one, the correct criterion of moral
wrongness is the actualist rule-consequentialist one. This is the proposal
that rejects Mill’s move of tying moral wrongness to blameworthiness.
There is a very strong objection to this proposal. What is the role and
importance of moral wrongness if it is disassociated from
blameworthiness?
In order to retain an obvious role and importance for moral wrongness,
those committed to the expectablist rule-consequentialist criterion of
blameworthiness are likely to endorse:
Simple expectablist rule-consequentialist criterion of moral
wrongness: An act is morally wrong if and only if it is forbidden
by the rules the acceptance of which would result in the greatest
expected good.
Indeed, once we have before us the distinction between the amount of
value that actually results and the rationally expected good, the full ruleconsequentialist is likely to go for expectablist criteria of moral
wrongness, blameworthiness, and decision procedures.
What if, as far as we can tell, no one code has greater expected value than
its rivals? We will need to amend our expectablist criteria in order to
accommodate this possibility:
Sophisticated expectablist rule-consequentialist criterion of moral
wrongness: An act is morally wrong if and only if it is forbidden
either by the rules the acceptance of which would result in the
greatest expected good, or, if two or more alternative codes of rules
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are equally best in terms of expected good, by the one of these
codes closest to conventional morality.
The argument for using closeness to conventional morality to break ties
between otherwise equally promising codes begins with the observation
that social change regularly has unexpected consequences. And these
unexpected consequences usually seem to be negative. Furthermore, the
greater the difference between a new code and the one already
conventionally accepted, the greater the scope for unexpected
consequences. So, as between two codes we judge to have equally high
expected value, we should choose the one closest to the one we already
know. (For discussion of the situation where two codes have equally high
expected value and seem equally close to conventional morality, see
Hooker 2000: 115. For a more nuanced view, see Hooker 2008: 83–4.)
An implication of this is that we should make changes to the status quo
where but only where these changes have greater expected value than
sticking with the status quo. Rule-consequentialism manifestly has the
capacity to recommend change. But it does not favor change for the sake
of change.
Rule-consequentialism most definitely does need to be formulated so as to
deal with ties in expected value. However, for the rest of this article, I will
ignore this complication.
6.2 Compliance and Acceptance
There are other important issues of formulation that rule-consequentialists
face. One is the issue of whether rule-consequentialism should be
formulated in terms of compliance with rules or in terms of acceptance of
rules. Admittedly, the most important aspect of accepting rules is
compliance with them. And early formulations of rule-consequentialism
did indeed explicitly mention compliance. For example, they said an act is
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morally wrong if and only if it is forbidden by rules the compliance with
which will maximize the good (or the expected good). (See Austin 1832;
Brandt 1959; M. Singer 1955, 1961.)
However, acceptance of a rule can have consequences other than
compliance with the rule. As Kagan (2000: 139) writes, “once embedded,
rules can have an impact on results that is independent of their impact on
acts: it might be, say, that merely thinking about a set of rules reassures
people, and so contributes to happiness.” (For more on what we might call
these ‘beyond-compliance consequences’ of rules, see Sidgwick 1907:
405–6, 413; Lyons 1965: 140; Williams 1973: 119–20, 122, 129–30;
Adams 1976, esp. 470; Scanlon 1998: 203–4; Kagan 1998: 227–34.)
These consequences of acceptance of rules should most definitely be part
of a cost-benefit analysis of prospective rules. Formulating ruleconsequentialism in terms of the consequences of acceptance allows them
to be part of this analysis. In fact, consideration of assurance and incentive
effects has played a large role in the development of rule-consequentialism
(Harsanyi 1977, 1982: 56–61; 1993: 116–18; Brandt 1979: 271–77; 1988:
346ff [1992: 142ff.]; 1996: 126, 144; Johnson 1991, especially chs. 3, 4,
9).
Just as we need to move from thinking about the consequences of
compliance to thinking about the wider consequences of acceptance, we
need to go further. Focusing purely on the consequences of acceptance of
rules ignores the “transition” costs of getting those rules accepted in the
first place. And yet these can certainly be significant (Brandt 1963: section
4; 1967 [1992: 126]; 1983: 98; 1988: 346–47, 349–50 [1992: 140–143,
144–47]; 1996: 126–28, 145, 148, 152, 223).
Suppose, for example, that, once a fairly simple and relatively
undemanding code of rules Code A has been accepted, the expected value
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of Code A would be n. Suppose the more complicated and demanding
alternative Code B would have an expected value of n + 5 once Code B
has been accepted. So if we just consider the expected values of
acceptance of the two alternative codes, Code B wins.
But now let us add in the relative costs of getting the two codes accepted.
Since Code A is fairly simple and relatively undemanding, the cost of
getting it accepted is −1. Since Code B is more complicated and
demanding, the cost of getting it accepted is −7. So if our comparison of
the two codes considers the respective costs of getting them accepted,
Code A’s expected value is n − 1, and Code B’s is n + 5 − 7. Once we
include the respective costs of getting the codes accepted, Code A wins.
As indicated, the costs of getting a code accepted are “transition costs”.
But of course such transitions are always to one arrangement from another.
The arrangement we are imagining the transition being to is the
acceptance of a certain proposed code. The arrangement we are imagining
the transition being from is … well, what?
One answer is that the arrangement from which the transition is supposed
to be starting is whatever moral code the society happens to accept
already. That might seem like the natural answer. However, it is a poor
answer. The reason it is poor is that rule-consequentialism should not let
the cost/benefit analysis of a proposed code be influenced by the costs of
getting people to give up whatever rules they may have already
internalised. This is for two reasons.
Most importantly, rule-consequentialist assessment of codes needs to
avoid giving weight directly or indirectly to moral ideas that have their
source in other moral theories but not in rule-consequentialism itself.
Suppose people in a given society were brought up to believe that women
should be subservient to men. Should rule-consequentialist evaluation of a
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proposed non-sexist code have to count the costs of getting people to give
up the sexist rules they have already internalised so as to accept the new
non-sexist ones? Since the sexist rules are unjustifiable, that they were
accepted should not be allowed to infect rule-consequentialist assessment.
Another reason for rejecting the answer we are considering is that it
threatens to underwrite an unattractive relativism. Different societies may
differ considerably in their extant moral beliefs. So a way of assessing
proposed codes that considers the costs of getting people already
committed to some other code will end up having to countenance different
transition costs to get to the same code. For example, the transition costs
to a non-racist code are much more from an already accepted racist code
than from an already accepted non-racist one. Formulating ruleconsequentialism so that it endorses the same code for 1960s Michigan as
for 1960s Mississippi is desirable.
The way to do this is to formulate the theory in terms of acceptance by
new generations of humans. So we compare the respective “teaching
costs” of alternative codes, on the assumption that these codes will be
taught to children who have not already been educated to accept a moral
code. We are to imagine the children start off with natural (non-moral)
inclinations to be very partial towards themselves and a few others. We
should also assume that there is a cognitive cost associated with the
learning of each rule.
These are realistic assumptions, with big implications. One is that a
cost/benefit analysis of alternative codes of rules would have reason to
favor simpler codes over more complex ones. Of course there can also be
benefits from having more, or more complicated, rules. Yet there is
probably a limit on how complicated or complex a code can be and still
have greater expected value than simpler codes, once teaching costs are
included.
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Another implication concerns prospective rules about making sacrifices to
help others. Since children start off focused on their own gratifications,
getting them to internalise a kind of impartiality that constantly requires
them to make large sacrifices for the sake of others would have extremely
high costs. There would also, of course, be enormous benefits from the
internalisation of such a rule — predominately, benefits to others. Would
the benefits be greater than the costs?
At least since Sidgwick (1907: 434), many utilitarians have taken for
granted that human nature is such that the real possibilities are (1) that
human beings care passionately about some and less about each of the rest
of humanity or (2) that human beings care weakly but impartially about
everyone. In other words, what is not a realistic possibility, according to
this view of human nature, is human beings’ caring strongly and
impartially about everyone in the world. If this view is correct, then one
enormous cost of successfully making people completely impartial is that
doing so would leave them with only weak concerns.
Even if that picture of human nature is not correct, that is, even if making
people completely impartial without draining of enthusiasm and passion,
the cost of successfully making people care as much about every other
individual as they do about themselves would be prohibitive. At some
point on the spectrum running from complete partiality to complete
impartiality, the costs of pushing and inducing everyone further along the
spectrum outweigh the benefits.
6.3 Complete Acceptance versus Incomplete Acceptance
Just as rule-consequentialists are more realistic if their cost/benefit
analyses of codes count the cost of getting those codes internalised by new
generations, they are more realistic if they assume that the internalisation
will not extend to every last person. There will be some people who end
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up committed to the mistaken about what is morally allowed. Others will
never have accepted any morality at all (psychopaths). Ruleconsequentialism needs to have rules for dealing with such people.
These will consist mainly in rules about punishment. From a ruleconsequentialist point of view, the main point of punishment is to deter
certain kinds of act. There is also the need to get undeterred, dangerous
people off the streets. Perhaps rule-consequentialism can admit that
another point of punishment is to appease the primitive lust for revenge on
the part of victims of such acts and their family and friends. Finally, there
is the expressive and reinforcing power of rules about punishment.
Nevertheless, some ways of formulating rule-consequentialism make
having rules about punishment difficult to explain. One such way of
formulating rule-consequentialism is:
An act is morally wrong if and only if it is prohibited by the code
of rules the full acceptance of which by absolutely everyone would
produce the greatest expected good.
Suppose absolutely every adult human fully accepts rules forbidding (for
example) physical attacks on the innocent, stealing, promise breaking, and
lying. Then presumably there would be little or no need for rules about
punishment. Without need for rules about punishment, society would get
little or no benefit from such rules. But there is a cost associated with each
rule included in a code. So there is a cost associated with the inclusion of
any rule about punishment. Because of this combination of cost with no
benefit, rules about punishment would not be endorsed by the form of
rule-consequentialism immediately above.
We need a form of rule-consequentialism that includes rules for dealing
with people who are not committed to the right rules, indeed even for
people who are irredeemable. In other words, rule-consequentialism needs
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to be formulated so as to conceptualise society as containing some people
insufficiently committed to the right rules, and even some people never
committed to any moral rules. Here is a way of doing so:
An act is wrong if and only if it is prohibited by a code of rules the
acceptance of which by the overwhelming majority of people in
each new generation would have the greatest expected value.
Note that rule-consequentialism neither endorses nor condones the nonacceptance of the code by those outside the overwhelming majority. On
the contrary, rule-consequentialism claims those people are morally
mistaken. Indeed, the whole point of formulating rule-consequentialism
this way is to make room for rules about how to respond negatively to
such people.
Another point to make about the above formulation is of course that
“overwhelming majority” is very imprecise. Picking a precise percentage
of society, say 90%, has an obvious element of arbitrariness to it (why not
89% or 91%?). Nevertheless, we can argue for a number in this range as a
reasonable compromise between two pressures. On the one hand, the
percentage we pick should be close enough to 100% to retain the idea that
moral rules are for acceptance by the whole society of human beings. On
the other hand, the percentage needs to be far enough short of 100% to
leave considerable scope for rules about punishment. It seems that 90% is
in a defensible range, given the need to balance those considerations. (For
dissent from this, see Ridge 2006; for a reply to Ridge, see Hooker and
Fletcher 2008. The matter receives further discussion in H. Smith 2010;
Tobia 2013; Portmore 2015.)
7. Three Ways of Arguing for Rule-consequentialism
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We have seen that rule-consequentialism evaluates rules on the basis of the
expected value of their acceptance by the overwhelming majority. What
rules will such an approach endorse? It will endorse rules prohibiting
physically attacking innocent people or their property, taking the property
of others, breaking one’s promises, and lying. It will also endorse rules
requiring one to pay special attention to the needs of one’s family and
friends, but more generally to be willing to help others with their (morally
permissible) projects. Why? The crude answer is that a society where such
rules are widely internalised and thus accepted would be likely to have
more good in it than one lacking such rules.
The fact that these rules are endorsed by rule-consequentialism makes
rule-consequentialism attractive. For, intuitively, these rules seem right.
However, other moral theories endorse these rules as well. Most
obviously, a familiar kind of moral pluralism contends that these
intuitively attractive rules constitute the most basic level of morality, i.e.,
that there is no deeper moral principle underlying and unifying these rules.
Call this view Rossian pluralism (in honor of its champion W.D. Ross
(1930, 1939)).
Rule-consequentialism may agree with Rossian pluralism in endorsing
rules against physically attacking the innocent, stealing, promise breaking,
and rules requiring various kinds of loyalty and more generally doing
good for others. But rule-consequentialism goes beyond Rossian pluralism
by specifying an underlying unifying principle that provides impartial
justification for such rules. Other moral theories try to do this too. Such
theories include some forms of Kantianism (Audi 2001, 2004) and some
forms of contractualism (Scanlon 1998; Parfit 2011; Levy 2013). In any
case, the first way of arguing for rule-consequentialism is to argue that it
specifies an underlying principle that provides impartial justification for
intuitively plausible moral rules, and that no rival theory does this as well
(Urmson 1953; Brandt 1967; Hospers 1972; Hooker 2000). (Attacks on
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this line of argument for rule-consequentialism include Stratton-Lake
1997; Thomas 2000; D.E. Miller 2000; Montague 2000; Arneson 2005;
Moore 2007; Hills 2010; Levy 2014.)
This first way of arguing for rule-consequentialism might be seen as
drawing on the idea that a theory is better justified to us to the extent that it
increases coherence within our beliefs (Rawls 1951, 1971: 19–21, 46–51;
DePaul 1987; Ebertz 1993; Sayre-McCord 1986, 1996). [See the entry on
coherentist theories of epistemic justification.] But the approach might
also be seen as moderately foundationalist in that it begins with a set of
beliefs (in various moral rules) to which it assigns independent credibility
though not infallibility (Audi 1996, 2004; Crisp 2000). [See the entry on
foundationalist theories of epistemic justification.] Admittedly, coherence
with our moral beliefs does not make a moral theory true, since our moral
beliefs might of course be mistaken. Nevertheless, if a moral theory fails
significantly to cohere with our moral beliefs, this undermines the theory’s
ability to be justified to us.
The second way of arguing for rule-consequentialism is very different. It
starts from a commitment to consequentialist assessment, and then argues
that assessing acts indirectly, e.g., by focusing on the consequences of
communal acceptance of rules, will in fact produce better consequences
than assessing acts directly in terms of their own consequences (Austin
1832; Brandt 1963, 1979; Harsanyi 1982: 58–60; 1993; Riley 2000). After
all, making decisions about what to do is the main point of moral
assessment of acts. So if a way of morally assessing acts is likely to lead to
bad decisions, or more generally lead to bad consequences, then,
according to a consequentialist point of view, so much the worse for that
way of assessing acts.
Earlier we saw that all consequentialists now accept that assessing each
act individually by its expected value is in general a terrible procedure for
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making moral decisions. There is widespread acknowledgement that
agents should decide how to act by appeal to certain rules such as “don’t
physically attack others”, “don’t steal”, “don’t break your promises”, “pay
special attention to the needs of your family and friends”, and “be
generally helpful to others”. And these are the rules that ruleconsequentialism endorses. Many consequentialists, however, think this
hardly shows that full rule-consequentialism is the best form of
consequentialism. Once a distinction is made between, on the one hand,
the best procedure for making moral decisions about what to do and, on
the other hand, the criteria of moral rightness and wrongness, all
consequentialists can admit that we need rule-consequentialism’s rules for
our decision procedure. But consequentialists who are not ruleconsequentialists contend that such rules play no role in the criterion of
moral rightness. Hence these consequentialists reject what this article has
called full rule-consequentialism.
However, whether the objection we have just been considering to the
second way of arguing for rule-consequentialism is a good objection
depends on whether it is legitimate to distinguish between procedures
appropriate for making moral decisions and the criteria of moral rightness
or wrongness. That matter remains contentious (Hooker 2010; de LazariRadek and Singer 2014: ch. 10).
Yet the second way of arguing for rule-consequentialism runs into another
and quite different objection. This objection is that the first step in this
argument for rule-consequentialism is a commitment to consequentialist
assessment. This first step itself needs justification. Why assume that
assessing things in a consequentialist way is uniquely justified?
It might be said that consequentialist assessment is justified because
promoting the impartial good has an obvious intuitive appeal. But that
won’t do, since there are alternatives to consequentialist assessment that
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also have obvious intuitive appeal. This is true, for example, of “act on the
code that no one could reasonably reject”. In fact, no one very abstract
moral idea is so clearly superior to its rivals that it can triumph without the
aid of further justification. What we need is a way of arguing for a moral
theory that does not start by begging the question which kind of theory is
most plausible.
A third way of arguing for rule-consequentialism is contractualist
(Harsanyi 1953, 1955, 1982, 1993; Brandt 1979, 1988, 1996; Scanlon
1982, 1998; Parfit 2011; Levy 2013). Suppose we can specify reasonable
conditions under which everyone would choose, or at least have sufficient
reason to choose, the same code of rules. Intuitively, such an idealized
agreement would legitimate that code of rules. Now if those rules are the
ones whose internalisation would maximise the expected good,
contractualism is leading us to rule-consequentialism’s rules.
There are different views about what would be reasonable conditions for
choosing among alternative possible moral rules. One view is that
everyone’s impartiality would have to be insured by the imposition of a
hypothetical “veil of ignorance” behind which no one knew any specific
facts about himself or herself (Harsanyi 1953, 1955). Another view is that
we should imagine that people would be choosing a moral code on the
basis of (a) full empirical information about the different effects on
everyone, (b) normal concerns (self-interested as well as altruistic), and (c)
roughly equal bargaining power (Brandt 1979; cf. Gert 1998). Parfit
(2011) proposes seeking rules that everyone has (personal or impartial)
reason to choose or will that everyone accept. If impartial reasons are
always sufficient even when opposed by personal ones, then everyone has
sufficient reason to will that everyone accept the rules whose universal
acceptance will have the best consequences impartially considered.
Similarly, Levy (2013) supposes that no one could reasonably reject a
code of rules that would impose on her burdens that add up to less than the
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aggregate of burdens that every other code would impose on others. Such
arguments suggest the extensional equivalence of contractualism and ruleconsequentialism. (For assessment of whether Parfit’s contractualist
arguments for rule-consequentialism succeed, see J. Ross 2009; Nebel
2012; Hooker 2014.)
8. Must Rule-consequentialism Be Guilty of
Collapse, Incoherence, or Rule-worship?
Rule-consequentialism was not clearly formulated until Urmson 1953 and
Brandt 1959. The theory attracted considerable attention until the early
1970s. Since the early 1970s, however, most moral philosophers have
thought of rule-consequentialism as fatally impaled on one or the other
horn of the following dilemma: Either rule-consequentialism collapses
into practical equivalence with the simpler act-consequentialism, or ruleconsequentialism is incoherent.
Here is why some have thought rule-consequentialism collapses into
practical equivalence with act-consequentialism. Consider a rule that ruleconsequentialism purports to favor — e.g., “don’t steal”. Now suppose an
agent is in some situation where stealing would produce more good than
not stealing. If rule-consequentialism selects rules on the basis of their
expected good, rule-consequentialism seems driven to admit that
compliance with the rule “don’t steal except when … or … or …” is better
than compliance with the simpler “don’t steal”. This point generalizes. In
other words, for every situation where compliance with some rule would
not produce the greatest expected good, rule-consequentialism seems
driven to favor instead compliance with some amended rule that does not
miss out on producing the greatest expected good in the case at hand. But
if rule-consequentialism operates this way, then in practice it will end up
requiring the very same acts that act-consequentialism requires.
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If rule-consequentialism ends up requiring the very same acts that actconsequentialism requires, then rule-consequentialism is indeed in terrible
trouble. Rule-consequentialism is the more complicated of the two
theories. This leads to the following objection. What is the point of ruleconsequentialism with its infinitely amended rules if we can get the same
practical result much more efficiently with the simpler actconsequentialism?
Rule-consequentialists in fact have an excellent reply to the objection that
their theory collapses into practical equivalence with actconsequentialism. This reply relies on the point that the best kind of ruleconsequentialism ranks systems of rules not in terms of the expected good
of complying with them, but in terms of the expected good of their
acceptance. Now if a rule forbidding stealing, for example, has exception
clause after exception clause after exception clause tacked on to it, the rule
with all these exception clauses will provide too much opportunity for
temptation to convince agents that one of the exception clauses applies,
when in fact stealing would be advantageous to the agent. And this point
about temptation will also undermine other people’s confidence that their
property won’t be stolen. The same is true of most other moral rules:
incorporating too many exception clauses could undermine people’s
assurance that others will behave in certain ways (such as keeping
promises and avoiding stealing).
Furthermore, when comparing alternative rules, we must also consider the
relative costs of getting them internalised by new generations. Clearly, the
costs of getting new generations to learn either an enormous number of
rules or hugely complicated rules would be prohibitive. So ruleconsequentialism will favor a code of rules without too many rules, and
without too much complication within the rules.
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There are also costs associated with getting new generations to internalise
rules that require one to make enormous sacrifices for others with whom
one has no particular connection. Of course, following such demanding
rules will produce many benefits, mainly to others. But the costs
associated with internalising such rules should be weighed against the
benefits of following them. At some level of demandingness, the costs of
getting such demanding rules internalised will outweigh the benefits that
following them will produce. Hence, doing a careful cost/benefit analysis
of internalising demanding rules will come out opposing rules’ being too
demanding.
The code of rules that rule-consequentialism favours (that is, rules that are
not too numerous, too complicated, or too demanding) can sometimes lead
agents to do acts that do not have the greatest expected value. For
example, following the simpler rule “Don’t steal” will sometimes produce
less good consequences than following a more complicated rule “Don’t
steal except when … or … or … or … or …”. Another example might be
following a rule that allows one to give some degree of priority to one’s
own projects, even when one could produce more good by sacrificing
one’s own projects in order to help others. Still, rule-consequentialism’s
contention is that bringing about widespread acceptance of a simpler and
less demanding code, even if acceptance of that code does sometimes lead
people to do acts with sub-optimal consequences, has higher expected
value in the long run than bringing about widespread acceptance of a
maximally complicated and demanding code. Since rule-consequentialism
can tell us to follow this simpler and less demanding code, even when
following it will not to maximise expected good, rule-consequentialism
escapes collapse into practical equivalence to act-consequentialism.
To the extent that rule-consequentialism circumvents collapse, this theory
is accused of incoherence. Rule-consequentialism is accused of
incoherence for maintaining that an act can be morally permissible or even
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required though the act fails to maximise expected good. Behind this
accusation must be the assumption must be that rule-consequentialism
contains an overriding commitment to maximise the good. It is incoherent
to have this overriding commitment and then to oppose an act required by
the commitment. (For a recent developments of this line of thought, see
Arneson 2005; Card 2007; Wall 2009.)
In order to evaluate the incoherence objection to rule-consequentialism,
we need to be clearer about the supposed location of an overriding
commitment to maximize the good. Is this commitment supposed to be
part of the rule-consequentialist agent’s moral psychology? Or is it
supposed to be part of the theory rule-consequentialism?
Well, rule-consequentialists need not have maximizing the good as their
ultimate and overriding moral goal. Instead, they could have a moral
psychology as follows:
Their fundamental moral motivation is to do what is impartially
defensible.
They believe acting on impartially justified rules is impartially
defensible.
They also believe that rule-consequentialism is on balance the best
account of impartially justified rules.
Agents with this moral psychology — i.e., this combination of moral
motivation and beliefs — would be morally motivated to do as ruleconsequentialism prescribes. This moral psychology is certainly possible.
And, for agents who have it, there is nothing incoherent about following
rules when doing so will not maximize the expected good.
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Brad Hooker
So, even if rule-consequentialist agents need not have an overriding
commitment to maximize expected good, does their theory contain such a
commitment? No, rule-consequentialism is essentially the conjunction of
two claims: (1) that rules are to be selected solely in terms of their
consequences and (2) that these rules determine which kinds of acts are
morally wrong. This is really all there is to the theory — in particular,
there is not some third component consisting in or entailing an overriding
commitment to maximize expected good.
Without an overriding commitment to maximize the expected good, there
is nothing incoherent in rule-consequentialism’s forbidding some kinds of
act, even when they maximize the expected good. Likewise, there is
nothing incoherent about rule-consequentialism’s requiring other kinds of
act, even when they conflict with maximizing the expected good. The best
known objection to rule-consequentialism dies once we realize that neither
the rule-consequentialist agent nor the theory itself contains an overriding
commitment to maximize the good.
The viability of this defense of rule-consequentialism against the
incoherence objection may depend in part on what the argument for ruleconsequentialism is supposed to be. The defense seems less viable if the
argument for rule-consequentialism starts from a commitment to
consequentialist assessment. For starting with such a commitment seems
very close to starting from an overriding commitment to maximize the
expected good. The defence against the incoherence objection seems far
more secure, however, if the argument for rule-consequentialism is that
this theory does better than any other moral theory at specifying an
impartial justification for intuitively plausible moral rules. (For more on
this, see Hooker 2005, 2007.)
Another old objection to rule-consequentialism is that ruleconsequentialists must be “rule-worshipers” — i.e., people who will stick
Winter 2015 Edition
39
to the rules even when doing so will obviously be disastrous.
The answer to this objection is that rule-consequentialism endorses a rule
requiring one to prevent disaster, even if doing so requires breaking other
rules (Brandt 1992: 87–8, 150–1, 156–7). To be sure, there are many
complexities about what counts as a disaster. Think about what counts as a
disaster when the “prevent disaster” rule is in competition with a rule
against lying. Now think about what counts as a disaster when the
“prevent disaster” rule is in competition with a rule against stealing, or
even more when in competition with a rule against physically harming the
innocent. Rule-consequentialism may need to be clearer about such
matters. But at least it cannot rightly be accused of potentially leading to
disaster.
An important confusion to avoid is to think that rule-consequentialism’s
including a “prevent disaster” rule means that rule-consequentialism
collapses into practical equivalence with maximising actconsequentialism. Maximising act-consequentialism holds that we should
lie, or steal, or harm the innocent whenever doing so would produce even
a little higher expected good than not doing so would. A rule requiring one
to prevent disaster does not have this implication. Rather, the “prevent
disaster” rule comes into play only when there is a very much larger
difference in the amounts of expected value at stake.
9. Other Objections to Rule-consequentialism
From the mid 1960s until the mid 1990s, most philosophers thought ruleconsequentialism couldn’t survive the objections discussed in the previous
section. So, during those three decades, most philosophers didn’t bother
with other objections to the theory. However, if rule-consequentialism has
convincing replies to all three of the objections just discussed, then a good
question is whether or not there are other fatal objections to the theory.
40
Brad Hooker
One set of other objections try to show that, given the theory’s criterion for
selecting rules, there are conditions under which it selects intuitively
unacceptable rules. For example, Tom Carson (1991) argued that ruleconsequentialism turns out to be extremely demanding in the real world.
Mulgan (2001, esp. ch. 3) agreed with Carson about that, and went on to
argue that, even if rule-consequentialism’s implications in the actual world
are fine, the theory has counterintuitive implications in possible worlds. If
Mulgan were right about that, this would cast doubt on ruleconsequentialism’s claim to explain why certain demands are appropriate
in the actual world. Debate about such matters continues (Hooker 2003;
Lawlor 2004; Woollard 2015: 181–205). And Mulgan has become a
developer of the theory rather than a critic (Mulgan 2006, 2009, and
2015).
A related objection to rule-consequentialism is that rule-consequentialism
makes the justification of familiar rules contingent on various empirical
facts, such as what human nature is like, and how many people there are in
need or in positions to help. The objection to rule-consequentialism is that
some familiar moral rules are necessarily, not merely contingently,
justified (McNaughton and Rawling 1998; Gaut 1999, 2002; Montague
2000; Suikkanen 2008). A sibling of this objection is that ruleconsequentialism makes the justification of rules depend on the wrong
facts (Arneson 2005; Portmore 2009). Again, debate about whether the
theory does point to the wrong facts continues (see Woollard 2015, esp.
pp. 185–86, 203–205).
The mechanics of teaching new codes throws up serious questions for
forms of rule-consequentialism that count the costs of getting rules
internalised by new generations. The reference to new generations is
meant to avoid having to count the costs of getting rules internalised by
existing generations of people who have already internalised some other
moral rules and ideas. But can we come up with a coherent description of
Winter 2015 Edition
41
those who are supposed to do the teaching of these new generations? If the
teachers are imagined to have already internalised the ideal code
themselves, then how is that supposed to have happened? If these teachers
are imagined not to have already internalised the ideal code, then there
will be costs associated with the conflict between the ideal code and
whatever they have already internalised. (This objection was formulated
by John Andrews, Robert Ehman, and Andrew Moore. Cf. Levy 2000.) A
related objection is that rule-consequentialism has not yet been formulated
in a way that enables it to deal plausibly with conflicts among rules
(Eggleston 2007).
Another line of objection to rule-consequentialism has focused on its idea
that the considerations that determine moral right and wrong must be
suitable for public acknowledgement. Arneson (2005) and de LazariRadek and Singer (2014) argue, as against rule-consequentialism, that
there is a potential gap between the considerations suitable for public
acknowledgement and the considerations that really do determine moral
right and wrong. Others take rule-consequentialism’s idea that the
considerations that determine moral right and wrong must be suitable for
public acknowledgement to be not only one of the aspects that ruleconsequentialism shares with Kantian ethics but also one of ruleconsequentialism’s attractions (Hooker 2000, 2010; Hill 2005; Parfit 2011;
Cureton 2015).
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Woollard, F., 2015, Doing and Allowing Harm, Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
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Utilitarianism: Act and Rule, entry in the Internet Encyclopedia of
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Related Entries
consequentialism | equality
Acknowledgments
This entry has benefited from very generous comments by Rob Lawlor,
Gerald Lang, Andrew Moore, Tim Mulgan, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong,
and Peter Vallentyne.
Winter 2015 Edition
53
Copyright © 2015 by the author
Brad Hooker
54

Hooker, "Rule Consequentialism"

Transcription

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