On Ethics - Part 1 - Utilitarianism
Morality is a useful social fiction; in that it helps humans satisfy shared goals and desires.
Most people would agree that, without it, their lives would ultimately be worser-off; wether through the loss of justice, rights, stability, pleasure, or other things they value.
It is in realising what we value, then, that morality finds it’s justification, and it is by how well a moral framework helps us do so that its success can be judged.
Utilitarianism – Act and Rule based – are two example of such useful social fictions.
And as per the above, both can be compared only by asking which moral framework more successfully helps us realise the thing we value.
Both: Act Utilitarianism (AU) and Rule Utilitarianism (RU) try to help us realise happiness. They both hold that happiness is life’s only desirable end. But they crucially differ in that Act Utilitarianism judges individual acts by how well they promote happiness, where as Rule Utilitarianism judges rules by how well they tend to promote happiness.
Put more rigurously, AU optimises happiness “locally”, act-by-act; for each individual decision, choosing the action with the highest expected utility in that particular case.
Whereas RU optimises happiness “globally”, rule-by-rule: choosing the general rule that would produce the highest expected utility if followed across many people and situations.
When asking wether RU can be a plausible alternative to AU, we are really asking wether RU can better optimize for happiness, since this is the value both moral frameworks optimize for.
And to that question the answer is YES… and NO.
RU is more optimal as a happiness maximising morality in societies. Since it is best understood as evaluating rules over a distribution of people, situations, and repeated interactions, thereby maximising expected utility across the distribution rather than utility within any single case.
Whilst AU is more optimal as a happiness-maximising morality at the level of the individual action, since it maximises expected utility within each particular case rather than across a wider distribution of cases.
Thus, if the core question poses wether RU provide a plausible alternative to AU in the society?
The answer is a resounding Yes.
If however the question refers to an isolated individual, or an isolated case, the answer is a resounding No.