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- Richard Arneson (2005). Sophisticated Rule Consequentialism: Some Simple Objections. Philosophical Issues 15 (1):235–251.The popularity of rule-consequentialism among philosophers has waxed and waned. Waned, mostly; at least lately. The idea that the morality that ought to claim allegiance is the ideal code of rules whose acceptance by everybody would bring about best consequences became the object of careful analysis about half a century ago, in the writings of J. J. C. Smart, John Rawls, David Lyons, Richard Brandt, Richard Hare, and others.1 They considered utilitarian versions of rule consequentialism but discovered flaws in the view that attach to the wider consequentialist doctrine. In the eyes of many, the flaws were decisive. Brad Hooker has produced brilliant work that unsettles this complacent consensus.2 Over a period of several years he has produced a sustained and powerful defense of a version of rule consequentialism that does not obviously succumb to the criticisms that have been thought to render this doctrine a nonstarter. He acknowledges intellectual debts to Richard Brandt. But Hooker avoid certain excrescences in Brandt’s efforts to conceive of morality as an ideal code of rules. Most notably, Hooker eschews Brandt’s misguided attempt to derive some version of rule utilitarianism from an underlying commitment to some form of contractualism. Moreover, Hooker has worked to articulate a version of rule consequentialism in sufficient detail that one can see how the different parts of the doctrine hang together and how the best version of the..Reading list | Discuss | Edit | Categorize |My bibliography
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Just about any proponent of a rule-based theory of morality must eventually confront the question of how to resolve confl icts among the rules that the theory endorses. Is there a priority rule specifying which rules must yield to which, as in Rawls’s lexical ordering of the fi rst principle of his theory of justice over the second?3 Must the agent intuitively bal-.
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| | Other links: muse.jhu.edu dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... The thesis of this paper is that consequentialism does not work as a comprehensive theory of right action. This paper does not offer a typical refutation, in that I do not claim that consequentialism is self-contradictory. One can with perfect consistency claim that the good is prior to the right and that the right consists in maximizing the good. What I claim, however, is that it is senseless to make such a claim. In particular, I attempt to show that the notion of what course of action maximizes the good has no content within a consequentialist framework. Since the problem that I identify rests with maximization, this refutation does not cut across the act/rule distinction. If rule consequentialism holds that there are occasions on which one should follow a rule rather than violate the rule in an optimific way, then it is not maximizing and my arguments do not apply; if not, then it collapses into act consequentialism. I have nothing to say about nonmaximizing forms of consequentialism.1 This refutation does, however, cut across the direct/indirect distinction.2 It makes no difference whether we take consequentialism as offering a principle of decision, or a standard of right. Presumably the former would be parasitic upon the latter for its legitimacy.
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| | Other links: bingweb.binghamton.edu dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Rule-consequentialists tend to argue for their normative theory by claiming that their view matches our moral convictions just as well as a pluralist set of Rossian duties. As an additional advantage, rule-consequentialism offers a unifying justification for these duties. I challenge the first part of the ruleconsequentialist argument and show that Rossian duties match our moral convictions better than the rule-consequentialist principles. I ask the rule-consequentialists a simple question. In the case that circumstances change, is the wrongness of acts determined by the ideal principles for the earlier circumstances or by the ideal ones for the new circumstances? I argue that whichever answer the rule-consequentialists give the view leads to normative conclusions that conflict with our moral intuitions. Because some set of Rossian duties can avoid similar problems, rule-consequentialism fails in the reflective equilibrium test advocated by the rule-consequentialists.
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| | Other links: springerlink.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Richard Arneson and Alison McIntyre have done me a great honor by reading my book Ideal Code, Real World so carefully.1 In addition, they have done me a great kindness by reading it sympathetically. Nevertheless, they each find the book ultimately unconvincing, though in very different ways. But the cause of their dissatisfaction with the book is not mistaken interpretation. They have interpreted the book accurately, and they have advanced penetrating criticisms of it. One group of their criticisms definitely draw blood. To treat the wound, my formulation of rule-consequentialism will have to be revised. A second group their criticisms seems to me fatal only if certain considerations are ignored. I will highlight the considerations that I think inoculate rule-consequentialism against these criticisms. In reaction to a third group of their criticisms, however, I have to accept that Arneson and McIntyre simply have quite different intuitions from mine, such that the prospects of agreement between the three of us are dim.
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| | Other links: blackwell-synergy.com interscience.wiley.com blackwell-synergy.com web.mac.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... 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 classed as rule-consequentialists include Austin 1832; Harrod 1936; Toulmin 1950; Urmson 1953; Harrison 1953; Mabbott 1953; Singer 1955; 1961; and most prominently Brandt 1959; 1963; 1967; 1979; 1989; 1996; and Harsanyi 1977; 1982; 1993. See also Rawls 1955; Hospers 1972; Haslett 1987; 1994, ch. 1; 2000; Attfield 1987, 103-12; Barrow 1991, ch. 6; Johnson 1991; Riley 1998; 2000; Shaw 1999; and Hooker 2000. Whether J. S. Mill's ethics was rule-consequentialist is controversial (Urmson 1953; Crisp 1997, 102-33).
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| | Other links: jstor.org mind.oxfordjournals.org plato.stanford.edu dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Rule consequentialism (RC) is the view that it is right for A to do F in C if and only if A's doing F in C is in accordance with the the set of rules which, if accepted by all, would have
consequences which are better than any alternative set of rules (i.e., the ideal code). I defend RC from two related objections. The first objection claims that RC requires obedience to the ideal code even if doing so has disastrous results. Though some rule consequentialists embrace a disaster-clause which permits agents to disregard some of the rules in the ideal code as a necessary means of avoiding
disasters, they have not adequately explained how this clause works. I offer such an explanation and show how it fits naturally with the rest of RC. The second disaster objection asserts that even if RC can legitimately invoke a disaster-clause, it lacks principled grounds from distinguishing disasters from non-disasters. In response, I explore Hooker's suggestion that “disaster” is vague. I contend that every plausible ethical theory must invoke something similar to a disaster clause. So if “disaster” is vague, then every plausible ethical theory faces a difficulty with it. As a result, this vagueness is not a reason
to prefer other theories to RC. However, I argue, contra Hooker, that the sense of “disaster” relevant to RC is not vague, and RC does indeed have principled grounds to distinguish disasters from nondisasters.
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| | Other links: springerlink.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Rule utilitarianism has recently enjoyed a resurgence of interest triggered by Brad Hooker’s sophisticated treatment in Ideal Code, Real World.1 An intriguing new debate has now broken out about how best to formulate rule utilitarianism – whether to evaluate candidate moral codes in terms of the value of their consequences at a fixed rate (such as 90%) of social acceptance (as Hooker contends), or to evaluate codes in terms of the value of their consequences throughout the entire range of possible acceptance rates (as Hooker’s opponent Ridge contends).2 I shall argue that both Hooker’s fixed-rate ruleutilitarianism and Ridge’s variable-rate rule-utilitarianism, suitably interpreted and revised, survive the criticisms that each theorist lodges against the other. But I shall use the insights gained through this examination to argue that both these forms of rule utilitarianism, arguably the best available, fall prey to two fatal problems that have gone unnoticed in these debates, or indeed in most debates about rule utilitarianism. The weaknesses I describe in Hooker and Ridge’s forms of rule utilitarianism threaten to undermine all versions of rule utilitarianism, not just the nuanced versions developed by Hooker and Ridge.
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| | Scholar | More options ... This paper examines recent attempts to defend Rule-Consequentialism against a traditional objection. That objection takes the form of a dilemma, that either Rule-Consequentialism collapses into Act-Consequentialism or it is incoherent. Attempts to avoid this dilemma based on the idea that using RC has better results than using AC are rejected on the grounds that they conflate the ideas of a criterion of rightness and a decision procedure. Other strategies, Brad Hooker's prominent amongst them, involving the thought that RC need contain no overarching concern to maximize the good are acknowledged to avoid the original dilemma, but lead to further problems of motivating and justifying RC in the absence of such a concern. The paper argues that Hooker's attempt to deal with these problems by using a 'Reflective Equilibrium plus method is unsuccessful.
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| | Other links: springerlink.com dx.doi.org jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Fixed-rate versions of rule-consequentialism and rule-utilitarianism evaluate rules in terms of the expected net value of one particular level of social acceptance, but one far enough below 100% social acceptance to make salient the complexities created by partial compliance. Variable-rate versions of rule-consequentialism and rule-utilitarianism instead evaluate rules in terms of their expected net value at all different levels of social acceptance. Brad Hooker has advocated a fixed-rate version. Michael Ridge has argued that the variable-rate version is better. The debate continues here. Of particular interest is the difference between the implications of Hooker's and Ridge's rules about doing good for others.
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| | Other links: interscience.wiley.com jstor.org dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... What are the appropriate criteria for assessing a theory of morality? In this enlightening work, Brad Hooker begins by answering this question. He then argues for a rule-consequentialist theory which, in part, asserts that acts should be assessed morally in terms of impartially justified rules. In the end, he considers the implications of rule-consequentialism for several current controversies in practical ethics, making this clearly written, engaging book the best overall statement of this approach to ethics.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Discussion of Richard Arneson, Sophisticated rule consequentialism: Some simple objections
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