Another important point about consequences is that the actual consequences of an action, beyond the action itself, need not be actual outcomes. 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. One worry about the above argument is that it is not clear why we should think Premise 1 is true. One criticism of consequentialism is that it ignores individual rights in favor of collective outcomes (McElwee, 2010). An approach of 'rule consequentialism' may support an insistence on inviolability of human rights in individual decision-cases, but will combine that with trying to design systems of rules that. The virtue ethics approach focuses on the " integrity" of the moral actor. Utilitarianism judges consequences by a "greatest good for the greatest number" standard. If the outcome of any action is positive for everyone in society, then it's morally correct; otherwise, it is wrong. It has a moral sense and an objective sense. Consequentialism states that an actions moral value is determined by its consequences. Perhaps these points are the basis of our sense of the importance of equality. Generated with Avocode.Watch the Next Video Corporate Social Responsibility. (From 2), What objectively ought to happen is whatever would promote the greatest possible balance of satisfaction of the desires of all people. A further worry about this new proposal is that it still does not directly tell us not to meddle. But since many people regard it as not quite in the spirit of consequentialism and many of the issues surrounding Rule Consequentialism are unique to it, we shall say little more about it here. For example, suppose God, who knows all the consequences, has announced that certain kinds of things are right. Before we check out these examples, you should note that a utilitarian considers all people to be of equal value to society. State consequentialism looks at how government laws and policies can affect citizens lives positively or negatively, depending on their outcome (Scheffler, 2009). Results-based ethics produces this important conclusion for ethical thinking: This far-fetched example may make things clearer: The classic form of results-based ethics is called utilitarianism. Consequentialism is a theory that says whether something is good or bad depends on its outcomes. You do a thorough and brilliant job of diagnosis and end up giving me the pill any responsible doctor would have to choose for the symptoms I display. Or one might propose instead that an action is good insofar as it causes less meddling and more total happiness. Act utilitarianism often shows "the end justifies the means" mentality. Many of our actions are aimed at developing skill. Further, suppose that God, society, your friend or your heart has sufficient authority on the points it addresses that the most reasonable way for you to estimate which of your own options are objectively right is to trust that authority. Hence, one might think, in the long run only the results remain, so the only thing that really matters about an action is its results. What is morality? Consequentialism is, as we have seen, one of many different proposed answers to that question. What then, do these two kinds of consequence have in common, that makes them both consequences? This article was peer-reviewed and edited by Chris Drew (PhD). However, when judging the idea solely on its results, as classic consequentialism does, then the end justifies the means.. Presumably the stronger desires are to count for more. Williams, Bernard. (From 1), What will satisfy each persons desire is her own happinessand whatever promotes that. It suggests two distinct levels when assessing whether an action is morally permissible its immediate effects (rule) and long-term impact (state) (Goodman, 2017). Parental support is an important element in overweight prevention programs for children. Eight short videos present the 7 principles of values-driven leadership from Gentile's Giving Voice to Values. Giving Voice To Values View All Eight short . See Firth (1952); Hare (1981), Seanor and Fotion (1988). Egoism. Scheffler, S. (2009). Here are three examples of consequentialism ethics playing out in three very different areas: Baby Hitler If you could go back in time and kill Hitler as a baby, would you do it? It is a familiar truth of everyday life that greater wealth for an individual is no guarantee of greater . In consequentialism, the consequences of an action include (a) the action itself, and (b) everything the action causes. Having life is something that provides value to people. So consequentialism would seem to support your tossing your garbage in the river. 10 An everyday example of act utilitarianism would be the following: Suppose that a person is given a book as a birthday present and when they are done reading it, a friend asks to borrow it.. Email: [email protected] Perhaps most consequences of most actions we decide on are like that: not actual outcomes, but only probabilities of outcomes. 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. It may be a short-run benefit or a long-run benefit. In choosing an action, one is normally not choosing its whole set of consequences, because one cannot know what most of the consequences are. In this article we will look at what act consequentialism is and whether it . In economics, we can replace the terms . Hence the reasonable expectation is that embezzling your grandmothers checks would have terrible consequences. See Bentham (1789); Den Uyl & Machan (1983). https://doi.org/10.1080/0731129x.2017.1345221, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/egoism/. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so. Theories like these that count the same kinds of consequence differently for each person acting, are sometimes called agent-relative forms of consequentialism, though one might wonder whether they are in the spirit of consequentialism at all. Hence the reasonable expectation is that harvesting the healthy patient would have bad consequences. Utilitarianism is a theory of morality that advocates actions that foster happiness or pleasure and oppose actions that cause unhappiness or harm. Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition,151(3), 393412. Web Privacy Policy
There are a number of different ways of formulating rule-consequentialism. 3 The version most relevant to law, rule consequentialism, evaluates legal rules solely based on their consequences.Legal rules, on this view, may (or must) go into effect if and only if . Additionally, predicting the future can be difficult due to unforeseen circumstances or changes in context. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/egoism/. Two Departures from Consequentialism., Brink, David. If we try to produce the greatest total benefit, then we are loving all people in the sense that we are being impartial, caring for people in general, promoting each persons well-being insofar as that is at stake in our actions and insofar as our helping one does not hurt others more. The Consequentialist Perspective. In, Railton, Peter. An example of Consequentialism would be deciding whether or not to take an Uber to the airport instead of driving yourself. The right act is the act which maximises well-being. If we take the above view that the good is happiness, and plug it into Plain Consequentialism, we get the view that the right action is the one that causes the most happinessmore than would have been caused by any of the available alternative actions. Anyone who stops to calculate consequences before taking any step to fulfill a commitment is not a person of integrity. Hence the consequences will probably be better. Look at any of the standard anti-consequentialist philosophical examples - trolley car, organ bank, . To keep a big secret, you must actively mislead and deceive people and keep them at a distance. While there are many varieties of consequentialism, their common thread is that, as the name suggests, normative evaluation of particular actions or rules depends on an analysis of consequences alone. When someone asks you a question, you should not stop to calculate the consequences before deciding whether to answer truthfully. 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. According to Fiet (2022), consequentialism: is a philosophical approach, one of a class of normative, teleological ethical theories, which posits that the consequences of ones conduct are the ultimate basis for judging it, either its rightness or wrongness (p. 225). On this view, a problem with setting a very high speed limit is that it causes early deaths, which reduce the amount of life and thus reduce the amount of happiness there will be. Stubbs, A. Perhaps, then, what counts as a good result is the amount of life that the action adds or subtracts in the world? Individuals are put in a position to make a choice between one life vs. multiple lives. following which will have the best consequences are the same as the non-consequentialist rules most of us apply in everyday life and in judging the hypothetical cases. How Thinking about Character and Utilitarianism Might Lead to Rethinking the Character of Utilitarianism., Railton, Peter. Consequentialism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Rule Consequentialism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Consequentialism [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]. Still, it will help reduce car accidents, potentially saving many lives. In one sense if can be argued that the practice of theory of consequentialism has practical value and application in criminal justice. Kant's ethics applies to all situations in which somebody does an intentional action. A worry about the argument is that premise (5) may not be true. Amartya Sen defends the capability approach (CA) and the "discipline of consequential evaluation" which suggests that his CA is consistent with some form of "consequentialism". One worry about these arguments is that if it happens that the most efficient way for you to help people is to send as much money as possible to help desperately poor people you do not know, then your following consequentialism may involve thinking of the people you know mainly as potential sources of money. Oxford: Oxford University Press. It follows the thought that actions can be judged entirely on the result of the act in question. A shorter cousin of the above argument, focusing on the fulfillment of desire rather than on happiness, avoids those worries. William Haines It is argued that consequentialism relies heavily on calculation and prediction, which can be time-consuming and difficult. Should you do it? Sharp criticisms of laissez-faire capitalism and militarism sit side-by-side with denouncements of . (From 7, crossing for you out of both sides of the equation), An action is good insofar as its overall consequences contain happiness. Moral common sense is shaped by and for the demands of ordinary moral life and so common sense may not be very reliable in odd cases. Consequentialism would seem to say that you should do this, but moral common sense says that you should not. (Premise), What each person ultimately desires is only her own happiness. protracted and demanding reflection: don't kill, don't steal, be honest, etc; these enable us to act efficiently in everyday life. For another example, one important implication of an action I take may be that I (already) am a certain kind of person. From utilitarianism and hedonism to egoism and act consequentialism, each form seeks to maximize the net benefits or minimize the harm caused by a decision or action. This ignores the way in which that happiness is shared out and so would seem to approve of acts that make most people happy, and a few people very unhappy, or that make a few people ecstatically happy and leave the majority at best neutral. Simply, consequentialism means that the moral worth of an action is determined by the result it produces rather than by any predetermined principles of morality. Some others are presented below, and anyone can invent new ones by following the instructions given in section 1a. (There can also be a scalar version of this view and of the others introduced below.). It says nothing about right and wrong. (2014, September 22). If I point to a pebble and say that it is a good pebble, you will not know what I mean. (From 4 and 5), Desiring something is the same thing as thinking that it will increase ones happiness or decrease ones unhappiness. It says that among all the very many things we could do at any given time, only one or a very few of them are right. Rather, fairness is traditionally concerned with distributions of what we might call external goods goods such as money, status, power, and political rights. See Brandt (1979); Hooker et al (2000). 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. Hence actions and policies that promote equality in external goods will cause more happiness by promoting a sense of community. A different kind of reply to the objection is to propose that one of the ultimate standards for goodness of consequences should be equality. So far as you can tell, heads and tails are equally likely, even if objectively there is a 100% chance of heads. Double Consequentialism: The word right is ambiguous. See Williams (1973); Williams (1981); Stocker (1976). A Plague of Catholic Cafeteria Consequentialism. Hence consequentialism is wrong. by Jason Blakely December 02, 2020. A different kind of reply to the objection is to propose a new standard for the goodness of consequences. 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. 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. What matters is the total amount, not who gets what. 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. Utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism. Hence consequentialism tends to hold that in deciding what to do, you ought to give just as much weight to the needs of total strangers as to the needs of your friends, your family, and even yourself. Utilitarianism holds that the most ethical choice is the one that will produce the greatest good for the greatest number. It is also egalitarian in that it takes everyone's welfare into account. 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. But it was the precise manner and position that made you win. Some people will be punished perhaps unfairly, but in total, less people will break the law, so the harshness of the punishment is justified. Ethical altruism carries the opposite sentiment from ethical egoism. But that way of thinking about life is, one might think, inhuman and immoral. In other words, it means that the result or outcome of taking a certain course of action will determine whether or not it was morally sound. A Critique of Utilitarianism, in. Results: Five themes emerged from the qualitative analysis: (a) each child's individual experiences and quality of life; (b) linked to home, school, and community life; (c) child or youth. But on many issues there is a broad range of solid agreement about what is morally obvious, at least in societies that have long permitted open discussion by all. Consequentialism can be broken down into two core beliefs: Today, consequentialism has many different forms from utilitarianism to rule consequentialism and has been applied in various contexts, from business decisions to criminal justice. Finally, some argue that consequentialism fails to consider certain values, such as justice or fairness when determining the morality of an action (Stubbs, 1981). But a problem with setting a very low speed limit is that driving very slowly takes up time. Consequentialism has both practical and philosophical problems: And these are things that many think are relevant to ethical judgements. (Before explaining this point, we should note that consequentialism on most versions is a theory about the moral quality of actions. Hedonism, on the other hand, says something is "good" if the consequence produces pleasure or avoids pain. If the evil group was so cleverly deceptive that even the Better Business Bureaus web site said they do good work fighting malaria, then you may think the damage done by my money was not my fault. This controversial line of thought is not only an objection to the above argument for consequentialism, it is also an argument against consequentialism. Ethical egoism is a type of consequentialist theory that states that individuals should act out of self-interest and pursue what is best for their own well-being rather than considering what might benefit others or society (Shaver, 2019). 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. The utilitarian theory focuses on an action that produces the greatest good which benefits the majority of individuals. (Premise), An action is good insofar as it helps to satisfy desire. Consequentialism might be used to argue that Mr X's human rights (and his and his family's happiness) should be ignored, in order to increase the overall amount of human well-being. As mentioned above, in consequentialism the consequences of an action are everything the action brings about, including the action itself. A different kind of reply to the objection is to adjust consequentialism itself so that it is no longer impartial. Understanding Dentology, Consequentialism, and Virtue Ethics Real-Life Examples of Virtue-Ethics 1. Various nonconsequentialist views are that morality is all about doing ones duty, respecting rights, obeying nature, obeying God, obeying ones own heart, actualizing ones own potential, being reasonable, respecting all people, or not interfering with othersno matter the consequences. In addition, the fine journal Utilitas is entirely devoted to the topic. We turn now to some of the most popular reasons to think consequentialism is false and some possible replies to these attacks. A worry about this line of thought is that if there were some simple theory like consequentialism that captured what morality is about, one might think that we would have recognized it long ago. (i) The objectively right action is the action with the best consequences, and (ii) the morally right action is any action one reasonably estimates to be objectively right. But if everyone hauled their garbage a few miles to the dump instead, in a year or two everyone would have a nice river, which is much more valuable to each person than the minor convenience of not having to haul ones garbage to the dump. One reply to this objection is that our intuitive sense of fairness is not mainly concerned with distributions of ultimate goods like happiness or well-being. If you happen to be in charge of setting speed limits, you might be thinking that a bad result is a death: the fewer deaths, the better. Here are two simple examples of such theories: Egoistic Consequentialism: Of all the things a person might do at any given moment, the morally right action is the one that has the best consequences for that person.