This is Dr. Stansel and this lecture is on a form of utilitarianism called rule utilitarianism. It is distinct from act utilitarianism, although they have some similarities. In this lecture I'll start by comparing act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism.
I will describe rule utilitarianism and how to apply it in answering moral questions. Act utilitarianism is what we call a situationalist moral theory. And that means it requires we make our moral decisions on a case-by-case basis.
Specifically, act utilitarianism requires that in any given situation we do what will most likely bring about greatest overall happiness to the people and other sentient beings involved in that situation. By contrast, rule utilitarianism is rules-based and what it requires is that we adopt and follow moral rules, which if everyone followed them, would be most likely to bring about greatest overall happiness. This means that in some situations, the rule utilitarian will actually do things that end up failing to create overall happiness within that smaller situation, because the rule utilitarian is sticking to a moral rule which they follow in all situations, and which they believe, by following in all situations, will help promote greatest overall happiness for all in the long term. I think that the difference between these two theories will start to become more clear as I get a little more into rural utilitarianism and how it's applied. And that's coming up in the lecture.
Let's look at the three main elements that I teach as part of rule utilitarianism. And first is the greatest happiness principle of rule utilitarianism. This states that we must follow the moral rule, which if followed by everyone would most likely bring about the greatest overall happiness. In this moral system, we do seek out moral rules and try to follow those rules, which overall, if everyone followed them, would bring about happiness. Sometimes in following rule utilitarianism, you may sacrifice your personal happiness.
Sometimes you may sacrifice the happiness of those around you, maybe many people around you, all for the sake of following a moral rule, which, if everyone followed it, would bring about greatest overall happiness when the happiness of everybody is run through the happiness calculus. At the end of this lecture, I'll be giving an example of how a rule utilitarian might answer the question of whether same-sex marriage should be legalized. And I think that will help you see how moral rules play a role in that system.
But right here, briefly, let me give an example. Let's suppose... Through rule utilitarianism, we determine that same-sex marriage should be legalized. And in fact, that's what I will argue at the end of the lecture, just as an example of rule utilitarianism in action. Okay, so let's imagine that we have applied rule utilitarianism, we have determined that same-sex marriage should be legalized.
But... that I myself don't like same-sex marriage and neither does anyone in my family or my immediate community. So according to rural utilities...
We should still uphold this moral rule. We should still be in favor of same-sex marriage being legalized because we recognize it will create greatest overall happiness for the country as a whole. Even though it may not please me personally and it may not even please my family or the community that I live in.
I might see a lot of suffering around me. of people who are unhappy about this law, but if I have applied the happiness calculus, I'll talk about that next, as rule utilitarians use it, and the results come out, gay marriage should be legalized, then that's the rule I must adopt and follow. Okay, so rule utilitarianism also uses the happiness calculus happiness calculus and here's how they use it. They will consider alternative moral rules that apply in a situation and they will assess the overall happiness that each rule will most likely produce if it's adopted and followed.
So whereas ACT utilitarianism uses uses the happiness calculus to generate a score for specific actions. Rule utilitarianism uses the happiness calculus to generate an overall happiness score for different moral rules. And then the theory holds that we should adopt and follow those rules with bring most overall happiness when compared to other potential rules we might follow. I mean you'll see all this in action in the example.
And then finally the idea of higher and lower pleasures. This idea is used here in exactly the same way as it is used in ACT Utilitarianism. What Mill meant by a higher pleasure was an intellectual pleasure.
Anything, any pleasure that we are able to experience because of some activity of the mind, such as the pleasure we get from learning, making, or enjoying art, thinking about moral issues, and having our moral views prevail. All of those things would count as higher pleasures. Why? Because they're intellectual. Um, When Mill refers to quote-unquote higher pleasures, he's not talking about the happiness score or the quantity of pleasure here.
He's talking about a type of pleasure, namely intellectual pleasures. And the term lower pleasures refers to bodily pleasures or sensual pleasures. These are pleasures we experience through our five senses.
such as food tasting good or a bed feeling really comfy or getting a hug from a friend. So again, it's really important to bear in mind that when you see this term higher and lower pleasures, we're not talking about the quantity or the score that the pleasure gets, we are talking about types of pleasures. intellectual or anything where the mind is necessarily involved, like the pleasure of learning, the pleasure of art.
Mill said the pleasure of religion. He counted that in the higher category. Those are considered higher. And then bodily pleasures are considered lower. This wording does reflect an idea which has been very common in Western philosophy.
that our minds are the better part of us and our bodies are a lesser or lower part of us. Often the human mind with its capacity for rational thought is identified as the essential or definitive feature of humanity, whereas our bodies are considered animalistic and related to animal world. I don't need to get deeply into this here, but it does help us to understand why Mill believed that in a happiness calculus, higher pleasures have to be given a higher score relative to the higher score. to lower pleasures. What does this mean?
It means higher pleasures need to be given more weight. They need to be weighted more heavily than lower pleasures. Here's an example. Let's say I face a choice between spending an hour reading a book or spending an hour taking a nap. And by the way, in this example, I'm just using act utilitarianism because this is a personal decision about what I'm doing with my afternoon.
I'm just using this example to demonstrate how we use the concepts of higher and lower pleasures. Okay, so it's afternoon on a Saturday. day I have a free hour trying to decide how to spend it I could read a book or take a nap well let's say reading a book will I'll enjoy that and I think yeah I like reading a book how about taking a nap yeah I'd enjoy that I like taking naps and let's say I think to myself well I don't know they both feel about equal I'm not really sure what to do and then I reflect on Mills concept of hire and lower pleasures.
Mill argues that reading a book should always win out over taking a nap if all other things in the scenario are equal, because he actually believes reading the book is more pleasurable than taking the nap. Sometimes we don't realize it is, but he argues that it is. It satisfies us more deeply.
It satisfies our truly human side more deeply. You know, taking a nap, oh, you know, that's even dogs and cats love taking a nap. It's ultimately not as fulfilling.
Maybe he would say, you know, it's not that interesting. It's not that engaging to us. He would certainly say, if you have a choice, read the book. And if I were actually writing out a happiness calculus chart and scoring, my options of reading the book versus taking the nap, I should give reading the book more points than taking the nap, because reading the book is intellectual and taking the nap is bodily. So when we're applying a happiness calculus using rule utilitarianism, and we are considering which moral rule we want to follow, we still should We should always be thinking for any sources of happiness and suffering that we think of in this process, we should always be asking ourselves, oh, is this a higher pleasure?
Is this a lower pleasure? Is this a higher suffering? Is this a lower suffering? And we should bear that in mind. In some cases, it may tip the scale.
In some cases, it won't. But in any case, we need to have it in mind. Here are the three steps that you need to go through when you are applying rule utilitarianism and let me be very careful to say that these are steps you go through in your thinking process. On the next slide, I will describe how to write this up.
So please bear in mind how to write it up is gonna look a little different from the steps in your thinking process. which you have to go through first before you can do your write-up. All right, let's look at the steps in that thinking process.
First of all, you're going to think about the moral question and consider the different moral rules that we might choose to follow in response to this scenario. Let me use the example of the moral question. According to rule utilitarianism, should same-sex marriage be legalized? So we have this question and we think of the moral rules that we might choose to adopt in response to this question.
Great options would be legalize same-sex marriage, outlaw same-sex marriage, or even perhaps require all people to engage in same-sex marriage. Outlaw all marriage. These are a range of moral rules that we might consider.
And why I have stated here in number one, think of two promising rules. What I mean by promising is there will be a whole range of moral rules that you could explore when answering a question as a rule utilitarian. There will often be way more than two.
There could be eight or ten. Well, we don't have time to explore all of those moral rules and apply the happiness calculus for each one. So what I want you to do is try to identify the two moral rules that most probably, using your best judgment, will lead to greatest overall happiness. And then in step two, you will actually perform the happiness calculus for each one of those.
And then you'll determine, you know, you'll score each one of those. And that's when you'll really be able to choose which rule wins out. All right, let's go on to step two. So in step two, you will perform the happiness calculus twice.
You need to do it for each of the rules you are considering. And so... These are two separate procedures. You apply the happiness calculus for the first rule.
How will you do that? Well, the same way that you apply the happiness calculus in act utilitarianism, except that instead of listing individuals who will be affected going down the left-hand column, you're going to list groups of people affected and the size of the group. Why? Well, in rule utilitarianism, we are assessing the happiness and the unhappiness that a moral rule will probably create if everyone follows it.
So in most cases, we're thinking about rules that either apply to the whole planet, or the United States, or the state of Texas. You know, if we're thinking of of laws, like should the state of Texas raise the drinking age? You know, then we would use the happiness calculus. Down the left-hand side, we would write out different groups of people within the state of Texas who would be affected and the size of those groups.
You're gonna, in the example that I'll give at the end of this lecture, you're gonna see how the happiness calculus is performed in this way and so I'm hoping that will bring it together and you'll see what I mean. Okay, you perform the happiness calculus two times, once for each rule, and down the left-hand side you'll affect, you'll list groups affected and their size because the size of the group matters. What if we have a scenario where We've got one smaller group and one much larger group.
We're looking for greatest overall happiness, right? So if a rule being adopted and being followed would make the larger portion of the population very happy, that rule's going to win. Still, in the end of the day, rule utilitarians, just like act utilitarians, want us to work on producing greatest overall quantity of happiness.
It's just that rule utilitarians think that the best way to do that is by following rules. Okay, as we perform the happiness calculus for the two possible rules, remember that when you're thinking about happiness and unhappiness that will be created, you should consider whether that happiness or unhappiness is mental or intellectual and whether it's bodily because the mental slash intellectual pleasures are considered quote-unquote higher and according to Mill they need to be weighted more heavily and bodily pleasures need to be weighted lower meaning they need to be scored lower. He doesn't tell us how much higher and how much lower to score them so Anyway, we'll see how that looks in practice.
Once we have performed these two happiness calculus operations, we compare overall scores. And then in step three, we should apply the greatest happiness principle of rule utilitarianism, which holds that it is morally required to follow a moral rule, which, if everyone followed it, would be most likely to bring about greatest overall happiness. So once you have gone through this thought process, then how do you write this up?
If I ask you a question on a homework or on a test, like, according to rule utilitarianism, should we do blank question mark? How would you actually answer that? Well, first of all, please write up your answer as a full paragraph, not a list of numbers. answers so it doesn't come out as a question set. It should look like a full paragraph with no numbers, no bullets.
What should you write about in that paragraph? Well, you should describe the two rules that you felt were promising and enough to be explored through the happiness calculus. You should list the groups of people and sentient beings who could be affected by these rules.
and also indicate their size, how big are these groups. You should describe in words your general findings from applying the happiness calculus twice. This means you do not put a chart in your answer.
You don't give me any happiness scores in your answer. Don't do that because they usually don't make a lot of sense. And also, you don't need to give all those details. What you need to do is describe the general contours or the biggest forms of happiness and unhappiness. which you saw in applying the happiness calculus twice, and which tipped the scale in one direction or another.
This is a great place to say that what you're doing here in your write-up is you are trying to argue for your answer to the moral question. Again, the moral question, according to rule utilitarianism, should we do blank? And you're going to have an answer to that question. You're going to want to say, according to rule utilitarianism, we should do this.
You need to defend that answer. You need to make your answer compelling for the reader. So in step three here, you want to describe as much of the happiness calculus process as your reader needs to understand why you came to the conclusion you did.
Don't describe every single part of the happiness calculus procedure. Just describe those parts that your reader needs to hear in order to be convinced that you got the right answer to the question. Now, you might be asking yourself, well, how much does a reader need to hear? This comes down to your judgment.
And I have to leave it up to you to exercise good judgment about how much you need to hear. How much is convincing? How much information do you need to be convincing? In the course, I am trying to teach you to make good judgments about things like that.
But this comes with practice. It comes from doing. And I need to put you in a position where you have to figure out that answer for yourself and try it out and see how you do and get feedback.
Okay. So, after discussing general findings of the happiness calculus applications, then you should state the greatest happiness principle of rule utilitarianism. Please either state it in your own words, or if you quote me or someone else, put it in quotation marks and cite your source.
Finally, you should conclude by stating clearly which rule must be followed and explain. How following this rule fulfills the greatest happiness principle of rule utilitarianism. So following this slide, I have several slides where you'll move through those slides and you'll read a sample answer.
And it's a long answer and I had to break it up over numerous slides. So some of them will not have any audio on them because I just want you to read, but I am going to put audio on some of them just to provide some discussion and clarification of some of what you're reading on the slide. But you might want to pause the lecture so that you can take your time and read each slide and then go ahead and press play. to forward on to the next slide when you're ready.
So the question that the sample answer is answering is, according to rural utilitarianism, should same-sex marriage be legal in the United States? And this is generally the type of question I will be asking you to answer when I ask you to apply rural utilitarianism. I'd like to have you answering contemporary moral questions like this one.
I want to point out that when you apply the happiness calculus in assessing various moral rules, when you are applying rule utilitarianism, you have some decisions to make about the groups of people and sentient beings that you want to represent in the left-hand column of your happiness calculus chart. You cannot list every single individual in the United States. It won't work.
It's too long, it would take too long. You need to break that bigger group, namely the U.S. population, down into smaller groups according to how that group will be affected by the moral rule that you're considering. In this case, it was clear and easy how I should do that. 67% of Americans are for same-sex marriage.
31% are opposed. That gave me... a pretty easy way to break the U.S. population into groups. I also found that 2.2 percent of Americans are gay or lesbian.
Obviously there's some overlap with that group of 2.2 percent and the other groupings of people opposed to same-sex marriage and people for same-sex marriage. It's good to note that but in the end it doesn't matter to the happiness. calculus. It's so clear what the results of the happiness calculus are going to be here. Since 67% of Americans are for same-sex marriage, and that's the greater majority, and we've got 2.2% of Americans who are gay or lesbian, it's clear that legalizing gay marriage will bring about greatest overall happiness, you know, no matter how you slice it.
So, um... Okay, so I want to point out that in answering this question, I went online and I did some internet research to find statistics about Americans'support of same-sex marriage. And it's very important that you do that whenever possible when you are asked to apply rural utilitarianism.
You can't really apply rule utilitarianism well if you don't know the facts of the situation. The rule utilitarian is interested in us following rules, which will create the greatest overall quantity of happiness for the population. So in order to do that and to really do that, we need to know what's going to make people happy.
Don't guess about that if you can't. go online and find reliable research. So this poll that I cited was by Gallup, and they are an incredibly reputable source of statistics.
So you do want to be looking for good sources of information. I also want to point out one line on this slide that says, these statistics are similar to the findings of other recent polls. I looked at it.
a couple polls, not just one. I want to recommend that you do that. We cannot apply act utilitarianism or rule utilitarianism without factual information about what's going to make people happy.
On this slide you'll see how I used the concepts of higher and lower pleasure in this sample answer. Ultimately, they don't end up being a deal breaker in how I've applied rule utilitarianism here, but because I am teaching higher and lower pleasures as part of rule utilitarianism, if you want to give a complete answer, you do need to include those ideas. even if they don't end up making a huge difference to your ultimate answer about how we should answer the moral question. I still want to see you using those ideas and showing an awareness of those ideas. So that's what I've done on this slide.
And I actually end up finding that most of the happiness on both sides of this issue, and most of the unhappiness. would all be counted as in the higher category. People either experience the higher pleasure of having their moral values promoted, or they experience the higher suffering of having their moral values not promoted.
Um, so again, most of the happiness and most of the suffering that we are noting when we do the happiness calculus fall into the higher category, either higher pleasure or higher suffering. So it's all weighted the same. The idea of lower pleasure doesn't really tip the scales here, but again, it's important to still be using these ideas so that you show me that you can, you show me that you understand them, and you show me that you understand the role that higher pleasures, higher suffering, lower pleasures, lower suffering play in this particular moral scenario.
Now that you have read the sample answer, something you can do if you'd like is go back through it again and find where the following words appear in my answer. Rule, happiness calcula... higher pleasure, lower pleasure, greatest happiness principle.
All of these words appear in my answer and all of these words should appear in your answer when you apply rule utilitarianism on a homework or on a test. Now having these words appear in your answer obviously it's not all you need to do. This is minimal.
This is a minimum that I want to see but it can be really helpful to students to know that there's this baseline here. After you write your answer I would encourage you to go back through and check and see see do you have all of these words somewhere in your answer because sometimes students won't and when they go through and double check they realize oh man I never said happiness calculus then then you might ask yourself did I even apply the happiness calculus and it can help you getting all the content into your answer that you need to have so again all the words that are bulleted here I want to see those words in your answer. Beyond that, I want them used appropriately in a way that shows me that you understand what they mean, and I want you to use them in a way that assists you in developing a strong answer to the question that I've asked. Great, so that's all I have for the lecture.
If you have any questions about this lecture, please email me.