Act and rule utilitarianism essay sample

Act and rule utilitarianism essay sample Similarities and differences of rule and act utilitarianism Utilitarianism is a moral theory that supposes that morally right actions produce good things when morally wrong actions lead to bad results. For utilitarians, the goal of morality is to improve life and make it much better with an increased amount of positive things (success and pleasure) and decreased amount of negative things (illness, pain). Utilitarianism has got a lot of theories and two of them are “rule utilitarianism” and “act utilitarianism”. Lets see what each of these terms means and how they differ. Actually, both theories goal is to reach best results, but they are different in their approaches how to do it. According to the act utilitarianism theory, when we have to decide what to do, its important to do only those things that will give the best results. The rule utilitarians have a code that consists of two parts: 1) if an action match to a moral rule, it can be morally justified; and 2) a moral rule can be justified if its insertion into the moral code would create more utility comparing with all other rules (or no rule). So, the main difference between these two theories is the act utilitarians use the principle to evaluate actions when rule utilitarians need to evaluate rules at start, and then actions with accordance with these rules. Lets view an example of ethical dilemma to understand how these two theories work on practice. You are in the boat with a young woman, and you see four children in the river that cannot swim, so they seem to drown very soon. The only way to save children is to push a woman in the water, but she will drown then. So, what you would do in this situation? The typical act utilitarian would push a woman in the water and save children, just because for their point of view, lives of 4 children are most valuable than a life of one woman. But the rule utilitarian wouldnt push a woman because such action approves the murder, that is more painful thing than the death of four people. So, we can observe how these two theories are acting on the same principles, but make the quite opposite conclusions based on the way how they apply their principles.