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date: 04 July 2022

Abstract and Keywords

After preliminaries concerning different accounts of the good and the distinction between actual-consequence consequentialism and expected-value consequentialism, this paper explains why consequentialists should prescribe a moral decision procedure dominated by rules. However, act consequentialists deny rules have a role in the criterion of moral rightness. But prescribing a decision procedure dominated by rules and then denying rules a role in the criterion of moral rightness seems problematic. Rule consequentialism gives rules roles first in the decision procedure agents should use and second in the criterion of moral rightness. But giving rules this second role has attracted objections, some of which are outlined and answered here. The final section of the paper considers some recent developments.

Keywords: act consequentialism, rule consequentialism, rules, decision procedure, criterion of rightness, blame, incoherence, reflective equilibrium, collective action problems, partial acceptance problems

Brad Hooker

Brad Hooker is Emeritus Professor at University of Reading and a Senior Research Fellow at Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at University of Oxford. He has published on a wide array of topics in ethics but is best known as the author of Ideal Code, Real World: A Rule-Consequentialist Theory of Morality.

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