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Rule Utilitarianism and Rational Acceptance

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Abstract

This article presents a rule-utilitarian theory which lies much closer to the social contract tradition than most other forms of consequentialism do: calculated-rates rule preference utilitarianism. Being preference-utilitarian allows the theory to be grounded in instrumental rationality and the equality of agents, as opposed to teleological assumptions about impartial goodness. The calculated-rates approach, judging rules’ consequences by what would happen if they were accepted by whatever number of people is realistic rather than by what would happen if they were accepted universally or by exactly 90% of the population, allows it to select rules based not just on their ability to give good advice to their followers but also on their ability to attract followers in the first place. The result is a theory that, although fully utilitarian and not at all pluralistic or intuitionist, nevertheless offers a principled justification for giving some weight to seemingly non-utilitarian considerations: Lockean natural rights, Kantian respect for autonomy, and Scanlonian distributive justice.

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Notes

  1. A functionally-similar combination, albeit under the bland title “equal consideration” rather than the more descriptive “calculated-rates rule preference utilitarianism”, has previously been advocated by Haslett (1987).

  2. Others have made similar points about possible non-teleological groundings of utilitarianism. For example, Scanlon (1982: 115) distinguishes “philosophical utilitarianism” from the possibility that utilitarianism will be a “normative implication” of contractualism, and Kagan (1998: 252, 319) likewise suggests that a theory which is contractarian or universalizing at a “foundational” level might be consequentialist at a “factoral” level.

  3. Haslett (1987: 49–50) asserts that neither he nor Hare are preference utilitarians. However, the disagreement is just a semantic one: he defines “preferences” in terms of a person’s actual attitudes rather than in terms of what the person would want if mentally competent and fully informed, and believes that we should promote the latter.

  4. Foot (1985: 203) explicitly acknowledges that “utilitarian theories of the type put forward by John C. Harsanyi and R. M. Hare” are exempt from her accusation of question-begging, so I think it is accurate to describe her as targeting only teleological consequentialism.

  5. This is the view defended in Hooker (2000), who extracts a rule consequentialist theory, mostly utilitarian but with some priority for the worst off, from Rawls’s principle of reflective equilibrium.

  6. Arguing for (a) and (b) would require replying to the “queerness” problems discussed by Mackie (1977: 38–42). Arguing for (c) and (d) would require reconciling the tension between the objectivity and normativity of moral judgments, as discussed by, e.g., Bagnoli (2002).

  7. I base the oligarch example on Gauthier (1986: 190–192), the racism example on Dworkin (1981: 197–201), and the medicine example on Taurek (1977).

  8. A more exotic route to preference utilitarianism would pass through noncausal decision theory: this pathway is implicitly suggested by Lewis (1979), and seems to be at least partially embraced by Hofstadter (1985: 737–779).

  9. I am of course using the phrase “universal law of nature” deliberately; contrast Hooker’s test with the one from Kant (1785: 4:421).

  10. Similar views have also been advanced by Haslett (1987: 55) and Miller (2021: 129), who respectively argue that the correct norms are the ones which would be the object of the optimific “social-pressure combination” or “uniform system of moral education”.

  11. This supposedly evolved as a paraphrase of an unpublished speech by Martin Niemöller; I do not know who first put it into its present form. See also the discussion of “indirect duties” to animals in Kant (1780: 239–241)—mistreating one group damages one’s own character, making it more likely than one will later mistreat others—and the discussion in Haslett (1987: 173–180) about the various ways in which discrimination tends to be bad even for the dominant group.

  12. Again, one might take this to be the project of Machiavelli (1532).

  13. For example, by Harsanyi (1977a: 634–635): “the main difference [between Harsanyi’s utilitarian view and Rawls’s contractualist view] is that Rawls makes the technical mistake of basing his analysis on a highly irrational decision rule, the maximin principle, which was fairly fashionable thirty years ago but which lost its attraction a few years later when its absurd practical implications were realized”.

  14. Compare with the discussion by Scanlon (1975: 317–318) on why individuals have an interest in having a zone of privacy.

  15. This formulation also closely resembles the view advocated by Gauthier (1986: 143–144).

  16. See Dworkin (1981) for an argument that there is no single conception of “equality of welfare” that is uniquely correct, and Temkin (1993) for a survey of the ways in which different conceptions of equality can disagree.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful for the assistance of several anonymous reviewers.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, 800 Algoma Blvd, Oshkosh, WI, 54901, USA

    Evan G. Williams

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Williams, E.G. Rule Utilitarianism and Rational Acceptance. J Ethics 27, 305–328 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-023-09428-7

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