The nature of conflict and violence has transformed substantially. The emergence of nuclear weapons has been a source of a big impact on the international power structure. The birth of nuclear weapons changed the character of war from a simple war to a total war. It virtually eliminated the gap between military personnel`s and the civilians, or between the combatants and non-combatants. The nuclear weapons, coupled with highly advanced computer technology made the modern war a machine war in which the role of soldiers appeared to have become much less than what it used to be in the pre-nuclear age. Today even a small state can, by acquiring nuclear technology and weapons, can become a formidable power in international relations.
uld be no trust that people are obeying rules if the comman man would just make decisions that allowed any kind of violations of law or cheating for sake of maximising good.
Bernard Williams argued consequentialism required impartiality which focuses on consequences of action and this requirement deprives an individual of their own integrity because the concept of utilitarianism doesn’t differentiate in a person themselves bringing about an outcome vs someone else producing an outcome.
Practically rule consequentialism proves to maximise utility in situations such as traffic rules. It would be safer if everyone followed rules like ‘no drunk driving or speed limit.’ Hence its safer to follow rule utility over act utility in such cases. 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 wh
