One is normally not even choosing the reasonably expectable consequences, because one has not formed any expectation about the actions likely overall consequences. C4.P18 However, at times, these . At such times we might overlook the fact that the aspects of morality that we agree on as obvious cover so much territory that they sketch the basic shape of civilized life. This made the world feel like a smaller place as you could instantly talk to anyone anywhere in realtime. What then, do these two kinds of consequence have in common, that makes them both consequences? Second, more concretely, to be moral is to care about people. Forming many romantic attachments hardly seems like the path toward perfection; nor perhaps does the widespread spiritual exercise of focusing on wishing people well without actually helping them. (From 1), It can never be right to choose something worse over something better, when nothing else is at stake. Consequentialism says you should do this; but moral common sense says that you should not. For example, if a certain action would be good for the bank account but bad for the health, there is a financial reason for it and a health reason against it. It may be a benefit of a particular kind: a financial benefit, a heath benefit, entertainment or knowledge. For example, suppose there is a machine that tosses a fair coin with such precision that whenever you press the Toss button, the coin always comes up heads. Hence the reasonable expectation is that embezzling your grandmothers checks would have terrible consequences. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Other versions of consequentialism may be generated by making small changes in this theory, as we shall see, so long as the new theory stays faithful to the broad idea that morality is all about producing the right kinds of overall consequences. Now, if you are the sort of person who actually would send money to save distant strangers, anything that cripples your efforts will hurt many people. Consequentialism is a normative theory of ethics that offers a systematic approach to reaching ethical and moral conclusions. Copyright 2023 Helpful Professor. Similarly, there are no general standards of goodness for whole sets of consequences in genera. It also sketches several of the most popular reasons to believe consequentialism, along with objections to those reasons, and several of the most popular reasons to disbelieve it, along with objections to those reasons. Ethical egoism advises that both parties actively pursue what they want. Consequentialism's underlying moral framework assumes that good outcomes are preferable to bad ones; that happiness is preferable to pain, and that consequences should be measured accordingly. (From 7, crossing for you out of both sides of the equation), An action is good insofar as its overall consequences contain happiness. Plain Scalar Consequentialism: Of any two things a person might do at any given moment, one is better than another to the extent that its overall consequences are better than the others overall consequences. According to act utilitarianism, then, the right thing to do tomorrow is to go out and do charity work; it is wrong to stay home and watch television all day. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. So consequentialism would seem to support your tossing your garbage in the river. And perhaps that is why common sense favors some partiality. Now, Plain Consequentialism implies that what I did is morally wrong, and Plain Scalar Consequentialism implies that it is morally very bad. The most famous version of this theory is utilitarianism. Results-based ethics plays a very large part in everyday life because it is simple and appeals to common sense: Act consequentialism looks at every single moral choice anew. See Sidgwick (1907); Brink (1986). But we need nice honest friends if we are to be effective doers of good in the long run. But that way of thinking about life is, one might think, inhuman and immoral. Or one might propose instead that an action is good insofar as it causes less meddling and more total happiness. consequentialism holds that a moral act should be judged by its outcomes rather than by any inherent moral value encapsulated in the act itself (p. 43). One worry about the above argument is that its initial premise may be false. This course of action is justified only if their actions can be proven to be a threat to society, regardless of their intentions or potential benefits. For example, when faced with multiple simultaneous patients in the emergency department it is important to have a way of reaching a decision quickly about which patient to attend to first. It may be a benefit to herself or to someone else. It emphasizes the importance of outcomes in determining the morality of an action rather than relying on predetermined moral principles or personal beliefs. Here the phrase overall consequences of an action means everything the action brings about, including the action itself. Thus consequentialism seems to defeat its own purpose. Perhaps the most standard precise version of consequentialism is Plain Consequentialism. An example here would be providing medical aid during wartime. See Le Guin (1973); Rawls (1999); Harsanyi (1977). If the outcome is good, how one achieved the outcome is not that important. Consider this argument for Plain Scalar Consequentialism, which is based on one proposed in Mill (1861): One worry about this argument is that 1 seems false. Nor does the objection apply to Rule Consequentialism. For example, a company wants to empty waste into a river; the people living downstream object. (2002). For instance, obeying highway speed limits might cause some individuals to miss their destination on time. In consequentialism, the consequences of an action include (a) the action itself, and (b) everything the action causes. For purposes of Expectable Consequentialism, a 50% epistemic chance of a good result is half as good as a 100% probability of that same result. But that does not imply that there is a kind of skill that is neither boxing nor piano but simply overall skill, nor does it imply that my training actions are irrational unless I think they will promote overall skill. Consequentialism. The pros and cons of consequentialism. For example, if you think that the whole point of morality is (a) to spread happiness and relieve suffering, or (b) to create as much freedom as possible in the world, or (c) to promote the survival of our species, then you accept consequentialism. Also, when you are about to follow through on a project you have started, you should not stop to calculate the overall consequences anew before you proceed. McElwee, B. In short, utilitarianism is consequentialist and welfarist. However, once one introduces such a complex standard of goodness for consequences, questions arise as to how to rate the relative importance of the parts of the standard and about how such a view can be given theoretical elegance. However, in support of consequentialism it might be argued that many of the things listed above do influence the good or bad consequences of an act, particularly when formulating ethical rules, and so they become incorporated in consequentialist ethical thinking; but only through the back door, not directly. It may be the prevention of some harm. Arguably it was not. Hedonism is the view that one's well-being is determined by the balance of one's positive and negative conscious experiences. See Smart (1961). Yet prominent commentators suggest or imply that Sen's CA is not "consequentialist". It is often used as a moral tool for decision-making and emphasizes the importance of consequences to determine the morality of an action (Driver, 2014). Classical utilitarianism includes two further elements: hedonism and totalism. When your boss says she cares only about results, that commonly means she does not care whether your gamble had a 1% or a 99% chance of succeeding. They reject any notion that positive results justify negative means, as every action carries its own costs and benefits regardless of the intent or purpose behind them. The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect., Foot, Philippa. See Sen (1982). For example when faced with a difficult situation in your life, you can use ethical theories to assist you in making the right decision. If you cross out +2 from both sides of 10+2 = 3(2+2), you change a truth to a falsehood. There are more versions of consequentialism than are presented above. All utilitarian theories share four key elements: consequentialism, welfarism, impartiality, and aggregationism. Utilitarianism suggests that the only item of intrinsic worth is happiness, but there are also other commodities that are worth considering. Scheffler, S. (2009). However, employers may have rules that leave no room for judgment on consequences for violations of the ethics code. The Consequentialist Perspective. In, Railton, Peter. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/egoism/. Additionally, predicting the future can be difficult due to unforeseen circumstances or changes in context. Cognitive film and media ethics. The right act is the act which maximizes well-being. Actions that promote egalitarian institutions, then, would tend to do the most good overall. 36 short illustrated videos explain behavioral ethics concepts and basic ethics principles. Here too you end up having had twice as much happiness as I had, so the total happiness we had is three times the happiness I had. Singer, Marcus G. Actual Consequence Utilitarianism., Singer, Peter. When we are thinking about morality, that is usually because we are puzzled about some hard question. When someone asks you a question, you should not stop to calculate the consequences before deciding whether to answer truthfully. Good and Bad Actions., Pettit, Philip. Hence consequentialism is opposed to common sense and is probably wrong. If people can get where they are going more quickly, they will probably use the time they saved to do things that will add happiness to their lives or the lives of others. Plain Consequentialism: Of all the things a person might do at any given moment, the morally right action is the one with the best overall consequences. Since Double Consequentialism does not imply that you should estimate the consequences of your everyday actions, it seems to escape the objection that consequentialism requires inhuman and immoral thinking. Rule Consequentialism: An action is morally right if and only if it does not violate the set of rules of behavior whose general acceptance in the community would have the best consequencesthat is, at least as good as any rival set of rules or no rules at all. Agent-Neutrality, Consequentialism, Utilitarianism: A Terminological Note., Smart, J. J. C., Free Will, Praise, and Blame,, Smart, J. J. C. An Outline of a System of Utilitarian Ethics. In, Stocker, Michael. One possible reply to this argument against consequentialism is that even if good overall consequences turns out to be meaningless, one might still think, for example, that the right action is the one that causes the most happiness. Anyone who does not know your secret will not really know you and hence cannot be your real friend. Consequentialism has many forms, including utilitarianism, hedonism, rule consequentialism, and many more, each emphasizing how to maximize net benefits or minimize harm. The history of utilitarianism. Of course, we cannot know the overall consequences of our actions. In assessing the consequences of actions, utilitarianism relies upon some theory of intrinsic value: something is held to be good in itself, apart from further consequences, and all other values are believed to derive their worth from their relation to this intrinsic good as a means to an end. Plain Scalar Consequentialism is different. Consequentialism refers to those moral theories that hold that the consequences of a particular action form the basis for any valid moral judgement about that action. Obligation dilemmas are situations where we feel we are obliged to opt for more than one choice. A similar line of thought starts from the idea that morality is at bottom two things. Finally, some argue that consequentialism fails to consider certain values, such as justice or fairness when determining the morality of an action (Stubbs, 1981). That assumption may be mistaken, because it is not true that an authority on whether something has a certain feature has to know exactly what that feature is.

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