Research Paper on:
Rule Utilitarianism vs. Act Utilitarianism

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
differences. It is the difference between someone who does not see any harm in keeping a sum of cash they find in the street and someone who sees it as  morally wrong not to turn it in to the police, that provides an illustration to show the difference in the belief systems. Some people look at rules or laws and  others look at results and hold onto an ends justify the means philosophy. Rule-utilitarians, or those who support rule-consequentialism, see things in a different light. Consequentialism is a relatively recent  concept in utilitarianism that rejects the old way to measure righteousness by looking at happiness, and instead looks at consequences; direct consequentialism is the idea that the goodness of anything  depends only on the goodness of the overall state of affairs consequent upon it (Honderich, 1995). It is like the older philosophy supported by Bentham but there are slight  differences. The important thing to remember is that the outcome, or the result, is what matters. Here, the ends justify the means. Direct consequentialism may be equated with act-utilitarianism and  is much like what is typically called utilitarianism in general. Rule-consequentialism evaluates the righteousness of an act based on various sets of rules (Honderich, 1995). Act-consequentialism evaluates righteousness in respect  to consequences. There is a significant different here and an obvious example of this is people who are overwhelmingly honest versus those who are relatively honest. The former perhaps subscribes  to a rule-consequentialist philosophy where they are meticulous in their desire to be completely law abiding. They do not go over the speed limit. Their tax returns are meticulous and  they would never accept the wrong change from a cashier. The rules to them are more important than the outcome. The latter sees the consequences as the most important thing