Two Ways of Looking at Moral Rules
Terminology alert: I will use “utilitarian” in this post to mean “someone who thinks that their moral duty is to maximize the happiness of sentient creatures”. My understanding is that there are many different versions of utilitarianism that prescribe moral duties that are different than this, but I think my definition is a decent baseline, and that anyways the points I make will apply to other versions of utilitarianism.
Here are two ways of thinking about moral rules:
Type I Rules: There are certain moral laws that govern what we ought and ought not to do. These can be rules like “don’t kill” and “recycle all your recyclables” and “strive for a society where people have freedom of speech”. If you believe these rules have value as Type I Rules, then it is because you believe there is some intrinsic moral value to about life, recycling, and freedom of speech, and you would follow these rules even if they lead to misery and ruin because they are the right things to do.
Type II Rules: These are rules that are not morally binding in themselves, but are useful as means to help you achieve some moral objective. If you’re a utilitarian who thinks that it is your moral obligation is to maximize human happiness, then you might think that a rule like “don’t steal” is a good way to maximize human happiness. People aren’t happy when they’re stolen from, and theft breaks down trust in society. But it’s possible that stealing would be justified in certain circumstances, e.g. if you’re Jean Valjean and need some bread to feed your family. Type II rules are more like guidelines that point you towards the best moral action.
If you are a utilitarian, you don’t really believe in Type I Rules (except the foundational rule that you should maximize happiness), and all of the moral rules you follow on a day-to-day basis are Type II Rules. But even people who believe that their life is governed by Type I Rules (e.g. Christians, who believe in things like the Ten Commandments) still have Type II rules, because no moral code gives you rules that will help you make decisions in every situation you will encounter in your life.
I’ve found it useful to distinguish between the Type I and Type II rules that I follow in my life. Identifying as Type II rules that I previously thought were Type I has opened me up to new ways of thinking about the best way to accomplish the moral objectives I care about. That last sentence was incredibly general, so here are some specific examples.
Example 1 -- Recycling: I used to think it was my moral obligation to recycle. A sense of shame at throwing an empty bottle into a trash can had been drilled into my head as long as I can remember, mostly by my mom and articles in National Geographic Kids. It was black and white: It’s good for me to recycle, and bad for me not to recycle. But I’ve since realized it’s not inherently evil to throw away recyclable material, but it is better for the world if more things are recycled. So what really matters is the total amount of material recycled, and it’s better for me to spend 1 minute going through the trash at work and moving 5 bottles from the garbage to the recycling than for me to carry around an empty bottle for 2 hours because there are no recycling bins around.
Example 2 – Free Speech: As a proud American, I used to think that the idea that society should have freedom of the press and free speech was a Type I rule, and that free speech was valuable in its own right. It’s nice that having free speech and freedom of the press contribute to the open flow of ideas in society, and that citizens are happier when they have these freedoms, and these freedoms allow for mechanisms (like the press) that hold powerful organizations (like the government) in check. But these benefits of free speech weren’t the fundamental reasons I thought free speech was valuable. I thought the ability for citizens to speak their mind was valuable, even if that didn’t make the citizens any happier and didn’t contribute to the flourishing of society. But now I believe that free speech is a means to an end, and is only valuable insofar as it contributes to the flourishing of society and the happiness of citizens.
Note that I think that a prescription of free speech is so conducive to human flourishing, that for all practical purposes I think of it like a Type I rule. I think every society should have free speech (with similar exceptions as are made in the US, e.g. shouting “fire” in a crowded theater). So while there aren’t any fundamental moral laws that require freedom of speech, it should still be sought in every society. What is fundamentally a Type II rule is elevated to a pseudo-Type I rule by its near-universal applicability.
Another reason to act as though your Type II Rules are Type I Rules is to send a stronger signal about the morality of certain actions. I fully admit that this is why I started being vegetarian. Two years ago I became very concerned about the treatment of animals on factory farms, as well as the effects of animal agriculture on climate change, so I adopted a practice of “not contributing to meat production”. What this meant to me was that I would not buy meat, but if there was leftover meat from a meal (which there was every day at my fraternity), I would eat it, with the idea that on the margin this wasn’t contributing to meat production.
But I send a much stronger signal about how I feel about the ethics of eating factory farmed animals if I say “I’m vegetarian” than I do if I say “I don’t buy meat but will eat it if it’s leftover”. So even though I don’t believe there’s anything inherently wrong with eating meat, I believe that being vegetarian is one of the best ways I can help reduce the suffering of animals and carbon emissions. The important thing isn’t that I don’t consume meat myself – it’s important that the total amount of meat being consumed decreases. But the best way to do that is to not consume meat myself (for full transparency: I don’t treat my vegetarianism as entirely a Type I Rule – I still occasionally eat meat if it’s leftover from an event and was going to be thrown out anyways. But this happens infrequently enough that I am still comfortable calling myself vegetarian).
So here are the takeaways: Find out whether the moral rules you follow get their value from the underlying importance of the rules themselves, or if they get their value from the predicted outcomes of following the rules. If they get their value from the predicted outcome, then it’s possible that you should still follow those rules in all circumstances. But understanding why you think it’s important to do or not do a certain action will help you to be more certain of and more committed to your actions.