Brad Hooker, Ideal Code, Real World, Oxford: Clarendon Press 2000, 213 pp.

"An act is wrong if and only if it is forbidden by the code of rules whose internalization by the overwhelming majority of everyone everywhere in each new generation has maximum expected value in terms of well-being (with some priority for the worst off)." (33) This is the rule-consequentialist principle which Hooker aims to justify and to defend against rule-consequentialism’s (RC) leading rivals which he takes to be act-consequentialism, "Ross-style pluralism", contractarianism and virtue ethics. Contemporary Kantian moral theory is hardly ever mentioned and, therefore, does not seem to be regarded by Hooker as a leading rival to RC. As a guideline for comparing these theories Hooker argues for the following five criteria for assessing moral theories: Moral theories should (i) "start from attractive general beliefs about morality," (ii) "be internally consistent," (iii) cohere with [...] the moral convictions we have after careful reflection," (iv) "identify a fundamental principle that both (a) explains why our more specific considered moral convictions are correct and (b) justifies them from an impartial point of view," and, (v) "help us deal with moral questions about which we are not confident, or do not agree." (4) The third criterion has special importance because Hooker aims to show that of all moral theories RC fits best with our moral convictions, and his argument for RC is not grounded on the consequentialist goal to maximize the good..

The main features of Hooker’s RC and some of his arguments for them are, roughly, the following:

Expected consequences: Hooker formulates RC in terms of the expected value of rules and considers this to be superior to an actual result RC because, insofar as the actual results are virtually impossible to know and, therefore, nobody can be blamed for not following those rules with the best results, actual result RC would distance moral wrongness too far from blameworthiness. Aggregate Well-being: According to Hooker the primary thing with intrinsic value is well-being (with some priority of the worse off). Besides well-being virtues may have intrinsic value. As to the nature of well-being Hooker stays neutral between conflicting theories because despite their disagreements about the nature of well-being there is wide agreement about the things that make us well off. General internalization: Because the internalization of rules has valuable consequences beyond the mere compliance with them Hooker formulates RC in terms of internalization rather than compliance. Since RC is made for the real world it must take into account the empirical fact that not everyone will internalize and comply with its rules. If, therefore, rules are to be selected on the basis of general instead of universal acceptance one has to name a specific level of acceptance for calculating which rules would maximize expected value. Hooker suggests we should select rules on the assumption that they are internalized by 90 per cent of each new generation. He readily admits that this figure is somewhat arbitrary and, therefore, a weakness in RC – but a weakness he thinks RC shares with all its rivals except act-consequentialism. Publicity: The rules are public and the same ones for everyone everywhere. The reason for this feature of RC is not consequentialist but rather that it is an attractive general belief about morality (according to Hooker’s first criterion mentioned above) and, therefore, fits well with our considered judgments (demanded by the third criterion). Impartiality and partiality: As stated in his fourth criterion a moral theory should be impartial in its justification of moral requirements. But, to avoid the demandingness objection levelled against purely impartial theories, especially against act-consequentialism, it should allow for partiality in the content of these requirements. Accordingly, RC’s rules are selected from an impartial perspective but allow for partiality towards oneself and towards those we have special connections to.

With respect to the four criteria RC is superior to Ross-style pluralism because it better satisfies criteria (4) and (5): A moral theory like RC which identifies a fundamental principle that explains why our more specific considered moral convictions are correct is more informative and integrated than moral pluralism in that it explains more than pluralism, and does this on the basis of fewer assumptions. A further advantage of a fundamental principle is that it could guide our practice in as yet unsettled moral questions where our convictions are uncertain. Compared to act-consequentialism (AC) RC is superior because AC³s criterion of rightness is unreasonably overdemanding and declares some acts as morally right which according to our considered moral judgments cannot be right. AC, therefore, violates the third criterion. Hooker’s treatment of the relation between RC and AC is not completely satisfying. On the one hand he states that "act-consequentialism tells us to make the vast majority of our moral decisions by recourse to rules – indeed, much the same rules that rule-consequentialism endorses. This blurs the contrast between act-consequentialism and rule-consequentialism." (142) On the other hand he later holds that AC is too demanding and that even AC’s distinction between its criterion of rightness and its decision procedure does not save AC from this objection. To me it seems inconsistent to adhere to both of these claims. RC and AC differ in their judgments about right actions and, therefore, are not extensionally equivalent regarding the criterion of rightness (as Hooker compellingly demonstrates), but since they endorse the same rules, they are extensionally (and intensionally) equivalent regarding their decision procedures. (Since AC evaluates everything by its consequences it also evaluates moral codes by its consequences. Thus Hooker’s following characterization of RC marks nothing that is distinctive of RC and the statement remains true if we replace ‘rule-consequentialism’ with ‘act-consequentialism’: "Rule-consequentialism evaluates codes by their consequences. Rule-consequentialism holds that the code whose collective internalization has the best consequences is the ideal code." (1f.)) This equivalence between AC and RC as regards practical matters has two consequences for RC. The first bears on Hooker’s last two chapters which deal with "Doing Good for the World" and "Help with Practical Problems". If AC and RC both endorse much the same rules, there is no special contribution of RC to practical problems. While this might weaken the case for RC, the other consequence strenghtens it: If AC has to rely on rules in its decision procedure and even on the same rules as RC, then it shares all the problems of RC regarding the selection and formulation of those rules. So some of the problems which Hooker regards as weaknesses of his criterion of rightness (e. g. the specification of the level of acceptance) are at the same time weaknesses in AC’s decision procedure. If this is correct then RC’s better coherence with our considered moral judgments concerning the moral rightness of actions should be decisive against AC. (In the preceding argument I assumed with Hooker that RC and AC would select the same rules. A question I cannot discuss here is whether this is indeed the case. The answer depends on the role the method of reflective equilibrium is allowed to play in the selection of rules. If some rules which maximize value are rejected because they conflict with our moral convictions RC would select different rules than AC. But is this method of rule-selection compatible with rule-consequentialism’s commitment to a code of rules which maximizes value?)

Hooker’s book contains a wealth of interesting discussions most of which I couldn’t even mention in this short review. His writing is extremely clear and the presentation of his theory and its rivals very fair-minded. Most of his arguments are compelling and make a strong case for this long neglected theory.