Thinking and Deciding

404 MORAL JUDGMENT AND CHOICE
is natural to everything to keep itself in ‘being,’ as far as possible. And
yet, though proceeding from a good intention, an act may be rendered
unlawful, if it be out of proportion to the end.
Other deontological rules might specify just treatment in terms of balancing or
retribution: Reward good behavior and punish bad behavior, even if there is no good
consequence. Still others concern truth telling or promise keeping. The important
aspect of these rules is that they are at least somewhat independent of consequences.
A blanket deontological rule concerning truth telling would prohibit white lies to
save people’s feelings. The rule could be tailored to allow exceptions, but the exceptions
would be described in terms of the situation, not the expected consequences.
Many laws are of this form, although some legal distinctions are based on intended
or expected consequences (e.g., manslaughter vs. murder).
I shall suggest that many deontological rules are the result of cognitive biases.
Because they are moral, we endorse them for others. They are not just heuristics in
the usual sense. We become committed to them. I shall shortly discuss some possible
biases that correspond to deontological rules.
Rule utilitarianism
Some philosophers have resolved the conflict between utilitarianism and deontological
theories by arguing that utilitarianism does not apply to specific acts (as we would
assume using utility theory), but rather to the moral rules that we adopt and try to live
by. This approach is called rule utilitarianism, as distinct from act utilitarianism.
Rule utilitarianism takes as its starting point the fact that most conventional moral
rules seem designed to maximize utility, and we might do best to follow them even
when we think that breaking them would maximize utility. For example, rights of
autonomy — for example, the right to refuse medical treatment — are justified by
the fact that individuals generally know best how to achieve their own goals. We take
away the rights of autonomy when this is probably false, such as young children and
patients with cognitive impairment. In many cases, by this argument, the assumption
that people know what is good for them is not true, but it is true more often than
not. Because it is impossible to ascertain (for adults outside of institutions) just
when it is true, we maximize utility by assuming that it is generally true of everyone.
This argument implies that autonomy is not a fundamental moral principle but rather
a generally well-justified intuition, suitable as a guide to daily life but not as the
fundamental basis of a moral theory.
The idea that following rules can maximize utility also helps us understand the
importance of moral motives and goals. Take the classic dilemma in which a cruel
dictator offers you the following choice: Either you shoot one of his political prisoners
for him, or he will shoot ten others, as well as the one. There is no way out,
and the choice you make will not be known to anyone else. Clearly, the utilitarian
solution here is to shoot one prisoner. One death is not as bad as eleven; but many