Morality, Rules And Consequences: A Critical Reader

MORALITY, RULES, AND CONSEQUENCES: A Critical Reader Edited by Brad Hooker, Elinor Mason, and Dale E. Miller EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS MORALITY, RULES, AND CONSEQUENCES This page intentionally left blank MORALITY, RULES, AND CONSEQUENCES A Critical Reader Edited by Brad Hooker, Elinor Mason, and Dale E. Miller EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS # The Contributors, 2000 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh Typeset in Fournier by Hewer Text Ltd, Edinburgh, and printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7486 1128 2 (hardback) ISBN 0 7486 1174 6 (paperback) The right of the contributors to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Contents Introduction 1 Brad Hooker, Elinor Mason, and Dale E. Miller 1 Between Act and Rule: The Consequentialism of G. E. Moore 6 William H. Shaw 2 The Educational Equivalence of Act and Rule Utilitarianism 27 Sanford S. Levy 3 Defending Rule Utilitarianism 40 Jonathan Riley 4 Values, Obligations, and Saving Lives 71 D. W. Haslett 5 The Moral Opacity of Utilitarianism 105 David Lyons 6 Global Consequentialism 7 Evaluative Focal Points 121 Philip Pettit and Michael Smith 134 Shelly Kagan 8 Hooker's Use and Abuse of Reflective Equilibrium 9 Consequentialism and the Subversion of Pluralism 156 Dale E. Miller 179 Alan Thomas 10 Why Rule Consequentialism is not Superior to Ross-style Pluralism Phillip Montague 203 Contents vi 11 Ruling Out Rule Consequentialism 212 Tim Mulgan 12 Reflective Equilibrium and Rule Consequentialism 222 Brad Hooker 13 Rule Consequentialism and the Value of Friendship 239 Madison Powers Notes on Contributors 255 Index 257 Introduction Brad Hooker, Elinor Mason, and Dale E. Miller What determines an action's moral standing, that is, whether it is right or wrong? While there is no comforting general consensus on an answer to this question, two ideas repeatedly bubble to the surface. The first is that a moral code ought to contain a number of rules that tell people how to behave and that are simple and few enough that the average person can learn and obey them. The second is that the consequences of actions matter, often more than anything else. It is clear that there is at least some tension between these ideas, since it seems unlikely that a relatively simple set of rules will always direct people to perform the actions which will result in the best state of affairs. Rule consequentialism draws on each of these ideas. Very roughly put, rule consequentialists believe that whether an action is morally wrong depends on whether it is forbidden by the authoritative set of moral rules, and that the authoritative set of rules is the set the universal establishment of which would have the best consequences. Obviously this rough statement of the view can be interpreted in different ways. Rule consequentialists differ, for example, about how literally the notion of universal establishment should be tak