In a previous article I discussed Classic or Act Utilitarianism, if you are unfamiliar with these terms you may want to go back and read it. This article will be over John Stuart Mill's version of Utilitarianism now known as Rule Utilitarianism.

so long as they benefited a large number of people. Bentham, the founder of Utilitarianism also seems to have believed that people would act totally rationally, according to his hedonistic calculus. He failed to account for the roll emotion plays in moral decision making. J. S. Mill set out to fix these problems however he would encounter some of his own.

The primary difference between the two Utilitarianisms can be found in their names. Act Utilitarianism says, "Whatever Action causes the most pleasure and the least pain is the morally right one." Rule Utilitarianism changes the word Action to Rule. "Whatever Rule causes the most pleasure and least pain is the morally right one." This may not sound like a big change at first but the ramifications of it are profound.

One thing that may not be obvious at first is that the hedonistic calculus that had been needed for every little decision under Act Utilitarianism now is only needed to establish principles or rules to live by. This streamlines the decision making process dramatically and immediately makes Utilitarianism a more accessible theory for the average person. The other major thing this does is eliminate the problem of rationalizing criminal behavior that, had always been a major objection to Utilitarianism in the past. Lets take the example used in my previous article. You may remember that in the example, you were able to rationalize stealing a bottle of Scotch on the grounds that you would share it with your friends and thus many people would get pleasure from it. If however you were a Rule Utilitarianist, you would have to decide if your actions could be made the rule instead of the exception. If stealing were the rule rather of the exception would it generate more pleasure or pain? I think it fairly obvious that more pain than pleasure would come from this. Of course there are those individuals who would be better at stealing and better at guarding their possessions and would get a lot of pleasure from this Anti-Utopia but on the whole of it more pain would be generated. It is for this reason that you would have to decide that you would be in the wrong to steal.

Another problem with Act Utilitarianism is, because the morality of any action depends on its consequences you have to wait until after the action is done to know with any certainty if it was moral or immoral. The best you can do beforehand is making an educated guess. Rule Utilitarianism is different. You can in most cases know ahead of time what the correct course of action is because the ramifications do not matter in any one particular action but rather in the rule as a whole.

Another place where Mill differed with Bentham was in how democratic Utilitarianism should be. While Bentham said that people should each have an equal vote in determining how much pleasure they would get from something Mill disagreed. He first limited the vote to people in control of their mental faculties. That is to say he limited the vote to sane adults. He also limited it to those who had been properly educated in the various higher pleasures. What does that mean? Mill said, "It is better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied, it is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied." He believed that it is better to strive for excellence than to be satisfied with squalor.

Here is an example. If an individual prefers Radio Disney to Mozart it is probably because he has not been properly educated. Mill would have said that Mozart is a higher pleasure than Radio Disney is. After some one has been taught to appreciate the nuances of classical music they would be qualified to make a decision for themselves. Presumably they would choose Mozart but if they still prefer Radio Disney then there is nothing anyone can do and they should be left to enjoy their music. The exception is when they are harming another; in that case it is they can be forcefully compelled to do or not to do something.

One possible objection to Rule Utilitarianism that I have not yet touched on is that it could easily be construed to be based more on following the rules than on the consequences, thus losing its Utilitarianism. It begins to sound more and more like Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative and, my next article.