Measuring the Consequences of Rules

Abstract

Recently two distinct forms of rule-utilitarianism have been introduced that differ on how to measure the consequences of rules. Brad Hooker advocates fixed-rate rule-utilitarianism (which measures the expected value of the rule's consequences at a 90 percent acceptance rate), while Michael Ridge advocates variable-rate rule-utilitarianism (which measures the average expected value of the rule's consequences for all different levels of social acceptance). I argue that both of these are inferior to a new proposal, optimum-rate rule-utilitarianism. According to optimum-rate rule-utilitarianism, an ideal code is the code whose optimum acceptance level is no lower than that of any alternative code. I then argue that all three forms of rule-utilitarianism fall prey to two fatal problems that leave us without any viable form of rule-utilitarianism.