ases. Act utility would give room for individuals to determine the best action.
A rule based system leads to greater overall utility because people are capable of having bad judgement. Having specific rules to follow maximizes utility by not relying on the drivers’ judgments that could possibly endanger others or themselves too. For instance, based on an individual drivers’ judgements not following the road stop signs over some emergency could endanger many. The stop sign would distinctly set the rule and tell drivers to stop and does not allow them to calculate whether it would be better to stop or not.
Rule consequentialism avoids criticisms of act consequentialism. According to critics, act consequentialism approves of actions that can be wrong, undermine justice, undermine basic trust among people, and its demanding because it requires people to make sacrifices.
Rule consequentialists avoids underming trust because they do not evaluate individual actions separately and instead support rules that maximize utility.
Many of the rules would maximize utility. For example, rules that clearly distinguish the right and wrong in medical practice where doctors would clearly not be allowed to use one healthy patients organs to save five other patient lives, even if saving five patients results in maximum good. Else no one would trust doctors or the benefits of medical treatment.
In defence of rule utility, Brak Hooker pointed out the different contexts in which the role of partiality and impartiality can be applied. Justification of moral rules has to be impartial. When deciding which rules to apply its important to consider the impact of the rule and gauge the interests of people involved.
The applicability of partial concerns with the what are the rules and how they should be applied in real cases. For example, partiality in cases where caregiving for children is concerned, even rule utility would give room to this. It would be justified to prioritise your own childrens emotional well being over your adult relatives because children are clearly the responsibility of their parents. This kind of par
