Assess The Difference Between Rule And Act Utilitarianism

Consequentialism is the foundation of utilitarianism, its core belief is that an act is morally right if and only if it produces more good results then bad results, on balance, than any other alternative. Similarly, utilitarians believe that an act is morally right if and only if it produces more overall happiness than unhappiness, on balance than any available alternative. In utilitarianism, the moral goal is to increase the amount of good things (pleasure and happiness) and decrease the amount of bad things (pain and unhappiness) for the greatest number of people. Utilitarianism can be broken up into two categories, Rule and Act utilitarianism. For both theories, they can agree that the only thing intrinsically valuable is pleasure/happiness

Rule utilitarianism uses a two-step process when determining if an action is right. When faced with a choice, rule utilitarians will list a set of potential rules, and after finalizing on a general rule, will ask themselves “would this rule, if uniformly followed, maximize overall happiness?”. For a rule utilitarian, they assess their rules on utilitarian grounds and then after assessing their actions, appeal to the rules. To them, an action is right if it conforms to a rule that when adopted, produces more overall happiness than any other alternative rule. The rule utilitarian in the example mentioned above, however, would disagree with me in that stealing the bread was the right thing to do because the general rule is “do not steal”. If in a world everyone was to adopt the rule that it was ok to steal to further your own advances, everyone would steal, therefore, it doesn't produce the greatest possible outcome so they reject the action of stealing altogether. Utilitarianism as we’ve previously discussed is mainly focused on maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. For abortion on either side of utilitarianism, there is no one single view or consensus on abortion as they are divided in how to apply the principle of utility. They do agree however that the consequences of abortion determine whether it should take place or not, and whatever

In this instance it may be permissible for her to have an abortion because for one, she did not choose to have sex it was forced upon her and second having an abortion will help not only her live a more pleasurable life, but also her family and friends as well since they won’t have to live with the pain from her killing herself if she is forced to keep this constant reminder. For both examples, the only way to decide whether abortion is permissible is entirely based on what greater happiness for everyone will be produced in a given