Rule Consequentialism Essay

In the 1950s, Rule Consequentialism was developed, and served as an alternative to Classical Act Utilitarianism. Rule Consequentialism seemed to avoid the seemingly incorrect moral conclusions that Classical Act Utilitarianism brought in difficult moral situations. I will evaluate this idea by applying both Rule Consequentialism and Classical Utilitarianism to a difficult moral dilemma. Then I will determine the validity of the conclusions, and see if either theory gives the intuitively appealing conclusion.

The case is about a woman named Janice. Janice has ALS, which is a progressive disease that will eventually kill her. The end of her life is difficult. The disease causes neurons to die, and this has left her unable to walk, and then later unable to eat or drink without assistance, and then unable to talk. The disease causes her an incredible amount of pain. Janice has requested her physician to give her a painless life-ending drug. The question is whether the physician is morally allowed to end Janice’s life (given that physician assisted suicide is legal). I will

Classical Act Utilitarianism is a welfarist theory, meaning that the only value considered in this theory is one’s welfare. For Classical Act Utilitarianism, welfare is one’s level of happiness. The theory also assumes hedonism, which claims that only pleasure is intrinsically good, and only pain is intrinsically bad. Therefore, happiness is measured by experiences of pleasure and absence of pain. Classical Act Utilitarianism can therefore be summed up by inputting the hedonist theory of value to the theory of right conduct for utilitarianism, giving us that “An action A is right if and only if (and because) A would produce at least as high an overall balance of pleasure versus pain as would any other alternative action open to the agent”