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22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 1. Goodness / g. Consequentialism

[only good consequences matter in morality]

33 ideas
Mohists desire wealth, population and social order as the best consequences [Mozi, by Norden]
     Full Idea: The consequentialist Mohists give a fairly objective characterisation of benefits as wealth, populousness, and social order, and harm as poverty, depopulation, and social chaos.
     From: report of Mozi (The Mozi [c.440 BCE]) by Bryan van Norden - Intro to Classical Chinese Philosophy 4.I
     A reaction: That is a formula favoured by many authoritarian leaders in modern times.
It is right to lie to someone, to get them to take medicine they are reluctant to take [Anon (Diss)]
     Full Idea: It is right to lie to your parents, in order to get them to take a good medicine they are reluctant to take.
     From: Anon (Diss) (Dissoi Logoi - on Double Arguments [c.401 BCE], §3)
     A reaction: I dread to think what the medicines were which convinced the writer of this. A rule such as this strikes me as dangerous. Justifiable in extreme cases. House on fire etc.
An action is only just if it is performed by someone with a just character and outlook [Plato]
     Full Idea: The description 'just' is applicable only to the benefit conferred or injury inflicted by someone with a just character and outlook.
     From: Plato (The Laws [c.348 BCE], 862b)
     A reaction: How should we describe the occasional administering of good justice by a generally wicked judge. Greeks focus on character, but moderns focus on actions.
Clearly perfect conduct will involve both good intention and good action [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: It is disputed whether the intentions or the actions have greater importance; …clearly the perfection of conduct will involve both.
     From: Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1178a32)
     A reaction: This seems right, so choosing one or the other as prior seems misguided. What to make of attempted murder? What of moral luck?
We judge people from their deeds because we cannot see their choices (which matter more) [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: It is because it is not easy to discern what sort of choice it is that we are forced to judge from the deeds what sort of person someone is; the activity is more worth having, but the choice is commended more.
     From: Aristotle (Eudemian Ethics [c.333 BCE], 1228a15)
     A reaction: This shows why Aristotle is the most important opponent of consequentialism. It is hard to see how one could praise a self-interested deed simply because it benefited others. Greed is never good.
The function of good men is to confer benefits [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: Conferring benefits is just what it is the function of good men to do.
     From: Aristotle (Politics [c.332 BCE], 1286b10)
     A reaction: Kant cannot ignore consequences (when assessing the maxim), and the great virtue theorist can't ignore them when judging virtuous behaviour.
Good applies to goals, just as truth applies to ideas in the mind [Aquinas]
     Full Idea: Good applies to all goals, just as truth applies to all forms mind takes in.
     From: Thomas Aquinas (Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo [1271], Q6.reply)
     A reaction: In danger of being tautological, if good is understood as no more than the goal of actions. It seems perfectly possibly to pursue a wicked end, and perhaps feel guilty about it.
You can't assess moral actions without referring to the qualities of character that produce them [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: One is more worthy of praise when one owes the action to one's good qualities, and more culpable in proportion as one has been impelled by one's evil qualities; assessing actions without weighing the qualities whence they spring is to talk at random.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (The Theodicy [1710], p.426), quoted by Franklin Perkins - Leibniz: Guide for the Perplexed 4.IV
     A reaction: Mill tries to separate judgement of the agent from judgement of the consequences of the action, but I think Leibniz has spotted that just judging outcomes ceases to be a 'moral' judgement.
A person isn't good if only tying their hands prevents their mischief, so the affections decide a person's morality [Shaftesbury]
     Full Idea: We do not say that he is a good man when, having his hands tied up, he is hindered from doing the mischief he designs; …hence it is by affection merely that a creature is esteemed good or ill, natural or unnatural.
     From: 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit [1699], I.II.I)
     A reaction: Note that he more or less equates being morally 'ill' with being 'unnatural'. We tend to reserve 'unnatural' for extreme or perverse crimes. Personally I would place more emphasis on evil judgements, and less on evil feelings.
My action is not made good by a good effect, if I did not foresee and intend it [Hutcheson]
     Full Idea: No good effect, which I did not actually foresee and intend, makes my action morally good.
     From: Francis Hutcheson (Treatise 2: Virtue or Moral Good [1725], §III.XII)
     A reaction: This is one of the parents of utilitarianism repudiating pure consequentialism. Bentham sharply divided the action (which is consequentialist) from the person (who has useful intentions, but is not particulary important); this division is misleading.
If an attempted poisoning results in benefits, we still judge the agent a poisoner [Reid]
     Full Idea: If a man should give to his neighbour a potion which he really believes will poison him, but which, in the event, proves salutary, and does much good; in moral estimation, he is a poisoner, and not a benefactor.
     From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Active Powers 3: Princs of action [1788], 5)
     A reaction: I take Reid to mean that morality concerns how we assess the agent, and not the results of his actions. Mill and Bentham concede that we judge people this way, but don't think morality mainly concerns judging people.
A good will is not good because of what it achieves [Kant]
     Full Idea: A good will is not good because of what it effects or accomplishes
     From: Immanuel Kant (Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals [1785], 394.3)
The good of an action is in the mind of the doer, not the consequences [Kant]
     Full Idea: What is essentially good in an action consists in the mental disposition, let the consequences be what they may.
     From: Immanuel Kant (Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals [1785], 416.43)
Morality involves duty and respect for law, not love of the outcome [Kant]
     Full Idea: All the morality of actions may be placed in their necessity from duty and from respect for the law, and not from love for or leaning toward that which the action is to produce.
     From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.1.III)
     A reaction: Kant tries to reject consequentialism, but you cannot assess your duty or the universal law without an assessment of probable consequences, and we could never choose between laws if we did not already see value in the outcome.
Motive shows the worth of the agent, but not of the action [Mill]
     Full Idea: The motive has nothing to do with the morality of the action, though much with the worth of the agent.
     From: John Stuart Mill (Utilitarianism [1861], Ch.2)
In the earliest phase of human history only consequences mattered [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: Throughout the longest part of history ('prehistoric times') the value or non-value of an action was derived from its consequences. …but now men are unanimous that the value of an action is in the intention behind it.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886], §032)
     A reaction: This seems to be Kant's fault. No one thinks that a reckless or malicios action is innocent if no actual harm results.
Utilitarians prefer consequences because intentions are unknowable - but so are consequences! [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: Utilitarians say actions must be judged by consequences, because it is impossible to know the origins. But one only knows the consequences about five steps ahead, and who knows what an action can stimulate, excite, provoke?
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §291)
     A reaction: The utilitarian slogan seems to be 'do your best', but that could apply equally to intentions and consequences. Nietzsche seems to offer nothing to compensate us for our massive ignorance. Nihilism.
Conduct is not isolated from its effect on the moral code [Hart,HLA]
     Full Idea: We must not view conduct in isolation from its effect on the moral code.
     From: H.L.A. Hart (Law,Liberty and Morality [1963], II 'Moderate')
     A reaction: The moral code may be excessively conservative, but there is no denying this point. Extreme individualistic libertarians must recognise that 'no man is an island'.
Consequentialists can hurt the innocent in order to prevent further wickedness [Foot]
     Full Idea: For consequentialists there will be nothing that it will not be right to do to a perfectly innocent individual, if that is the only way of preventing another agent from doing more things of the same kind.
     From: Philippa Foot (Utilitarianism and the Virtues [1985], p.61)
     A reaction: This is her generalised version that Williams dramatised as Jim and the Indians. Roughly, if you achieve a good outcome, it matters little how it is achieved. Foot sees consequentialism as the main problem with utilitarianism.
Why might we think that a state of affairs can be morally good or bad? [Foot]
     Full Idea: We should ask why we think that it makes sense to talk about morally good and bad states of affairs.
     From: Philippa Foot (Utilitarianism and the Virtues [1985], p.68)
     A reaction: This is the key question in her attack on consequentialism. There is nothing 'morally' good about my football team winning a great victory.
Good outcomes are not external guides to morality, but a part of virtuous actions [Foot]
     Full Idea: It is not that maximum welfare or 'the best outcome' stands outside morality as it foundation and arbiter, but rather that it appears within morality as the end of one of the virtues.
     From: Philippa Foot (Utilitarianism and the Virtues [1985], p.73)
     A reaction: She cites justice and benevolence as aiming at different (and even conflicting) outcomes. I'm not sure about her distinction between 'outside' and 'within' morality. I suppose a virtuously created end is a moral end, unlike mere good states of affairs.
The idea of a good state of affairs has no role in the thought of Aristotle, Rawls or Scanlon [Foot]
     Full Idea: The idea of the goodness of total states of affairs played no part in Aristotle's moral philosophy, and in modern times plays not part either in Rawls's account of justice or in the theories of more thoroughgoing contractualists such as Scanlon.
     From: Philippa Foot (Utilitarianism and the Virtues [1985], p.76)
     A reaction: We can add Kant to that. But if the supremely good state of affairs were permanently achieved, would that make morality irrelevant? A community of the exceptionally virtuous would not need the veil of ignorance, or contracts.
If the aim is good outcomes, why are killings worse than deaths? [Scheffler, by Foot]
     Full Idea: It is not clear why, in the measurement of the goodness of states of affairs or total outcomes, killings for instance should count so much more heavily than deaths.
     From: report of Samuel Scheffler (The Rejection of Consequentialism [1982], pp.108-12) by Philippa Foot - Utilitarianism and the Virtues p.61
     A reaction: Or drunken drivers worse than careless drivers. Or stolen bracelets than lost bracelets. The point is that morality is about the behaviour of people, and not about consequences.
Consequentialism assumes that situations can be compared [Williams,B]
     Full Idea: The emphasis on the necessary comparability of situations is a peculiar feature of consequentialism in general.
     From: Bernard Williams (A Critique of Utilitarianism [1973], 2)
     A reaction: A nice point. Utilitarians might achieve comparison by totting up the happiness in each situation, but once you include the consequences of the consequences the problems are obvious. Was 1789 a good thing? Too early to say.
For a consequentialist massacring 7 million must be better than massacring 7 million and one [Williams,B]
     Full Idea: Making the best of a bad job is a consequentialist maxim, and it will have something to say even pn the difference between massacring seven million and massacring seven million and one.
     From: Bernard Williams (A Critique of Utilitarianism [1973], 2)
     A reaction: If every life counts, the consequentialists have got something right here. Not caring exactly how many were massacred is a sort of callousness (even when the number can't be established).
It is an error of consequentialism to think we just aim at certain states of affairs; we also want to act [Williams,B]
     Full Idea: We do not merely want the world to contain certain states of affairs (it is a deep error of consequentialism to believe that this is all we want). Among the things we basically want is to act in certain ways.
     From: Bernard Williams (Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy [1985], Ch. 4)
     A reaction: A key objection. Does it matter whether Hiroshima is destroyed by earthquake or bombing?
Maybe consequentialism is a critique of ordinary morality, rather than describing it [Harman]
     Full Idea: Consequentialism may be put forward not as an attempt to capture intuitive folk morality but rather as a critique of ordinary tuitions.
     From: Gilbert Harman (Moral Philosophy meets social psychology [1999], 10.1)
     A reaction: It is certainly true that most people are concerned with why an action was performed, and (after initial anger) are prepared to forgive an unintended disaster. We have no moral objections to earthquakes, which have bad consequences.
You can't separate acts from the people performing them [Glover]
     Full Idea: A mistake of consequentialists is to treat actions as though they can somehow be isolated from the people performing them.
     From: Jonathan Glover (Introductions to Utilitarianism and its Critics [1990], Pt Five)
Negative consequences are very hard (and possibly impossible) to assess [Graham]
     Full Idea: Negative consequences make the extension of the consequences of our actions indefinite, and this means that it is difficult to assess them; it may make it impossible, since there is now no clear sense to the idea of THE consequences of an action at all.
     From: Gordon Graham (Eight Theories of Ethics [2004], Ch.7)
     A reaction: The general slogan of 'Do your best' covers most objections to the calculation of consequences. It is no excuse for stealing a wallet that 'at least I wasn't committing genocide'. How easy were the alternative actions to do?
What matters for morality is the effects of action, not the psychological causes [Kekes]
     Full Idea: What is crucial to morality are the good and evil effects of human actions, not their psychological causes.
     From: John Kekes (Against Liberalism [1997], 03.4)
     A reaction: The context is his attack on the liberal idea that morality only concerns the actions of autonomous agents. Kekes says he is not a full consequentialist. He just urges that consequences be given greater weight. Even Kant must care about that.
Consequentialism emphasises value rather than obligation in morality [Scruton]
     Full Idea: According to consequentialism, the fundamental concept of morality is not obligation (deontological ethics) but value (axiological ethics).
     From: Roger Scruton (A Dictionary of Political Thought [1982], 'consequentialism')
     A reaction: These two views could come dramatically apart, in wartime, or in big ecological crises, or in a family breakup, or in religious disputes. Having identified the pair so clearly, why can we not aim for a civilised (virtuous) balance between the two?
Teenagers are often quite wise about ideals, but rather stupid about consequences [Hursthouse]
     Full Idea: Adolescents tend to be much more gormless about consequences than they are about ideals.
     From: Rosalind Hursthouse (On Virtue Ethics [1999], Ch.2 n12)
     A reaction: Very accurate, I'm afraid. But this cuts both ways. They seem to need education not in virtue, but simply in consequences.
Consequentialism wrongly assumes a clear line between an act and its consequences [Crisp,R]
     Full Idea: What is wrong with consequentialism is that it assumes that there is agreement about when an act ends and when its consequences begin.
     From: Roger Crisp (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.31)
     A reaction: I certainly agree that this is a mistake in consequentialism, which has a crude idea of what an action is, though I am not convinced that this is the key fault in the theory. The theory doesn't distinguish acts by people from those by machines.