Rule Utilitarianism: The Rule Worship Objection

I am working on a new paper which looks at promise keeping from a motive utilitarian (or desire utilitarian) perspective.

Yes, I know, I am no longer a motive (desire) utilitarian. However, a lot of people are and I am thinking that a paper that takes a utilitarian from act utilitarianism to motive utilitarianism would at least be two steps in the right direction.

One of the issues to overcome is that of "rule worship". This problem prevents act-utilitarians from becoming rule utilitarians - which is one of those two steps from act utilitarianism to motive utilitarianism. So, the first paper of the paper addresses the problem of rule worship, explaining how desire utilitarianism or motive utilitarianism handles that issue.

First, Norcross raised in one quick sentence the problem of rule-worship as a reason to reject rule-utilitarianism. Where a person can do more good from breaking a rule than by obeying it, one seems to require paying homage to a rule that a utilitarian cannot easily account for. 

In the version of motive utilitarianism I have in mind, "motive worship" is a matter of causal necessity. It is simply not possible to override a motive, unless one has a stronger motive to do so (or several weaker motives that combine to outweigh a stronger motive). It is like having a form of rule-utilitarianism where it is not possible to violate a rule without referencing another rule regarding the violations. 

This assumes a Humean theory of motivation where "reason is the slave of the passions" and fail to motivate any action on its own. It is not within the scope of this paper to defend this theory. I will have to assume it, and save its defense for another time. 

Motives are persistent entities. We cannot turn a motive on or off at will. I know of a lot of people - alcoholics and drug addicts, people who are afraid of public speaking and those afraid of flying, dieters and people trying tips control their spending - who would like it to be the case that our desires come with an on/off switch, but that is not the case. 

It may be easier to think f desires rather than motives - so long as "desire" is understood broadly. On this view, a desire may be understood as a rule backed by motivational force. Talk of commitment to a rule or internalizing a rule may be understood as talk of turning a rule into a desire (or an aversion). 

So, if the only way to override a motive is with other motives, we have to ask what the effects will be of a person having that motive - of having it through all of the circumstances in which it might, in the real world, influence that person's actions. 

Furthermore, when we are talking about moral motives, we are talking about motives that are to be universalized. As Sidgwick himself argues, to say that a person ought to perform an action in a given circumstance is to say that anybody in similar circumstances ought to perform the same action. Given the assumptions above concerning motives, this means that if we are making a moral claim about what the agent ought to do, we are making a claim about motives that all people should have. Which means that, from a utilitarian perspective, we need to ask about the implications of everybody having those motives that would cause them to perform the required action in similar circumstances. 

Given the motives that may be required for a person to perform the act that creates the greatest happiness, we may have reason to hope that he is not the type of person who would perform the act that, in this one case, would have promoted general utility. While we can admit that the act would have provided the most utility, we can also say that the person who would have performed such an act is a bad person – decidedly not the type of person we would want to encourage anybody to become, and the type of person we would want to discourage the agent from remaining.