Online research in philosophy

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-.

This is a book about moral reasoning: how we actually reason and how we ought to reason. It defends a form of "rule" utilitarianism whereby we must sometimes judge and act in moral questions in accordance with generally accepted rules, so long as the existence of those rules is justified by the good they bring about. The author opposes the currently more fashionable view that it is always right for the individual to do that which produces the most good. Among the salient topics covered are: an account of the utilitarian function in society of generally accepted moral rules; a discussion of how we interpret existing moral rules and create new ones; and a defense of "rule" utilitarianism against the charge that it either commits one to irrational rule worship, or collapses into a form of "act" utilitarianism.

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.

The central thesis of Derek Parfit's On What Matters is that three of the most important secular moral traditions – Kantianism, contractualism, and consequentialism – all actually converge in a way onto the same view. It is in this sense that he suggests that we may all be 'climbing the same mountain, but from different sides'. In this paper, I argue that Parfit's argument that we are all metaphorically climbing the same mountain is unsound. One reason his argument does not work is that he has misunderstood the way in which a plausible rule-consequentialism should understand the supervenience of rightness on all possible acceptance levels of the ideal moral code. In place of Parfit's own understanding of this, I develop a view I call 'variable-rate rule-utilitarianism', which I argue shares the key insight of Parfit's view but avoids a fatal objection to his own articulation of that insight. Finally, I explore how this modification might allow us to still make a case that we are all 'climbing the same mountain', albeit in a very different way and for very different reasons than the ones Parfit had in mind.

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..

Rule-utilitarianism, in spite of its considerable attractions, is a theory in need of a plausible and precise formulation. The basic idea behind rule-utilitarianism is that right action should be defined in terms of what would be required by rules which would maximise either actual or expected utility if those rules gained general acceptance or (on some versions of the theory) general compliance. Rule-utilitarians differ over whether acceptance or compliance is the key notion (see Hooker 2000: 75-80) and also over whether the theory should be couched in terms of actual or expected utility. I shall here officially remain neutral on these difficult questions, as the main arguments here go through equally well on either interpretation, assuming that both versions of the theory are otherwise defensible, anyway (see below). However, partly for ease of exposition and partly because I consider it to be the more plausible view, I shall frame my discussion in terms of acceptance and expected utility.

The basic idea of rule-utilitarianism is that right action should be defined in terms of what would be required by rules which would maximize either actual or expected utility if those rules gained general acceptance, or perhaps general compliance. Rule-utilitarians face a dilemma. They must characterize 'general acceptance' either as 100% acceptance, or as something less. On the first horn of the dilemma, rule-utilitarianism in vulnerable to the charge of utopianism; on the second, it is open to the charge of arbitrariness and lack of philosophical depth. I press this objection, and develop and defend an alternative version of rule-utilitarianism which can evade the dilemma. I call this new version 'variable-rate rule-utilitarianism'.

The basic idea of rule-utilitarianism is that right action should be defined in terms of what would be required by rules which would maximize either actual or expected utility if those rules gained general acceptance, or perhaps general compliance. Rule-utilitarians face a dilemma. They must characterize 'general acceptance' either as 100% acceptance, or as something less. On the first horn of the dilemma, rule-utilitarianism in vulnerable to the charge of utopianism; on the second, it is open to the charge of arbitrariness and lack of philosophical depth. I press this objection, and develop and defend an alternative version of rule-utilitarianism which can evade the dilemma. I call this new version 'variable-rate rule-utilitarianism'.

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.