Rule Utilitarianism
Rule utilitarianism is a form of utilitarianism that says an action is right as it conforms to a rule that leads to the greatest good, or that "the rightness or wrongness of a particular action is a function of the correctness of the rule of which it is an instance".[1] Philosophers Richard Brandt and Brad Hooker are major proponents of such an approach.
For rule utilitarians, the correctness of a rule is determined by the amount of good it brings about when followed. In contrast, act utilitarians judge an act in terms of the consequences of that act alone (such as stopping at a red light), rather than judging whether it faithfully adhered to the rule of which it was an instance (such as, "always stop at red lights"). Rule utilitarians argue that following rules that tend to lead to the greatest good will have better consequences overall than allowing exceptions to be made in individual instances, even if better consequences can be demonstrated in those instances.
Compare action under a description , where a sentence contributes to the ontology of actions by the power of its descriptiveness. In rule utilitarianism, an operation with the same type signature as "descriptiveness" is used to attach sentences to actions, but in this case to filter them through the predetermined lens of a ruleset. See intentions vs rules for more.