For example, if stealing food feeds your starving family, a consequentialist would say it is the right thing to do. Society does not solely focus on happiness when making choices. For example, Ralph Wedgwood suggests we picture the rational probability . But that way of thinking about life is, one might think, inhuman and immoral. Should the Numbers Count?, Thomson, Judith Jarvis. This controversial line of thought is not only an objection to the above argument for consequentialism, it is also an argument against consequentialism. The theoretical world of entrepreneurship. Famine, Affluence, and Morality., Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter. Teleological ethics is further subdivided into 1) Ethical Egoism, 2) Utilitarianism, and 3) Eudalmonism. For example, lets suppose economists could prove that the world economy would be stronger, and that most people would be happier, healthier, and wealthier, if we just enslaved 2% of the population. Cognitive film and media ethics. Individuals are put in a position to make a choice between one life vs. multiple lives. 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. If the greatest total can be created only by exploiting the miserable to make the happy even happier, then such consequentialism would seem to say that you should do it. So looking for a range of 'realistic' - real life, true to life, matter of fact, everyday, &c. - situations to which it applies misses its totally general applicability. No intentional action escapes its scope. Sharp criticisms of laissez-faire capitalism and militarism sit side-by-side with denouncements of . 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. Hence consequentialism conflicts with common sense. But the people who die in accidents were all going to die eventually anyway, so a fatal accident does not mean there are more deaths than there otherwise would have been. If you want to do good for me, doing the sorts of things that are normally thought of as violating my personal rights is probably a bad bet. Reviewers ensure all content reflects expert academic consensus and is backed up with reference to academic studies. Consequentialism and Environmental Ethics can be read as an attempt to correct this misunderstanding. Choosing different time periods may produce different consequences, for example, using cheap energy may produce good short-term economic results, but in the long-term it may produce bad results for global climate, choosing different groups of people may produce different consequences, an act that produces a good result for group X may at the same time produce a bad result for group Y, or for society in general, so the ethical choices people make are likely to be different according to which group they use for their moral calculations, the most common solution to this problem is to look at the consequences for a large group such as 'society in general', alternatively, ethicists can try to look at things from the standpoint of an 'ideal', fully informed and totally neutral observer, results-based ethics is only interested in the consequences of an act, the intentions of the person doing the act are irrelevant, so an act with good results done by someone who intended harm is as good as if it was done by someone who intended to do good, the past actions of the person doing the act are irrelevant, the character of the person doing the act is irrelevant, the fairness of the consequences are not directly relevant. First, abstractly, to be moral is to do ones rational best to do what is objectively right. Actions that promote egalitarian institutions, then, would tend to do the most good overall. Consequentialism has been criticized for ignoring individual rights in favor of collective outcomes. Suppose I donate $100 to Malaria Aid, but it turns out this group aids malaria and I have funded an outbreak. All the advice on this site is general in nature. In other words, one must ask whether the action promotes benefit overall. For you could have tossed the coin in many slightly different ways, and in many slightly different positions. An example of ethical egoism would be a person who owes money to a friend and decides to pay the friend back not because that person owes money, but because it is in his best interest to pay his friend back so that he does not lose his friend. For example, a Consequentialist who thinks the kind of consequence that matters is happiness is unlikely to think that one persons happiness is more important than anothers (so long as the amounts of happiness in question are the same). Hence it would be misleading to say that consequentialism is the view that morality is all about results. . Utilitarianism holds that the most ethical choice is the one that will produce the greatest good for the greatest number. So, they agree that consequentialism is true. In Section 3 we shall discuss reasons to think consequentialism is false and some worries about those reasons. Here the phrase overall consequences of an action means everything the action brings about, including the action itself. One might object that if the objectively right action is the one whose consequences are best, then general social opinion cannot be an authority on objective rightness, even on those issues where the general opinion is clear. Plain Consequentialism is a theory about which actions are right. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/egoism/. What then, do these two kinds of consequence have in common, that makes them both consequences? Therefore, it is important to account for the moral agent's community or communities within which she operates. For example, killing one person to save five others would be considered moral according to this theory because it would result in greater overall happiness than if no one was killed. Thus, on a consequentialist account, a morally right action is an action which produces good consequences. Further, if you have a big secret that would repel nice honest people, any nice honest person who learns your secret will not want to be your friend. Publicado en junio 16, 2022 por . Consequentialism is an ethical theory that judges whether or not something is right by what its consequences are. Now, different kinds of benefits yield different kinds of reasons. For instance, most people would agree that lying is wrong. Hence if you have such a secret, your further projects will be more poorly chosen, designed, and carried out. A different kind of reply to the objection is to propose that one of the ultimate standards for goodness of consequences should be equality. Hedonism, on the other hand, says something is "good" if the consequence produces pleasure or avoids pain. In other words, ethical judgments should be based on the outcome or consequence of a particular course of action rather than on ones intentions or beliefs. We feel we are obliged to carry out an action from a moral or legal standpoint. In addition, the fine journal Utilitas is entirely devoted to the topic. When we are thinking about morality, that is usually because we are puzzled about some hard question. Deontology and the Agent: A Reply to Bennett. 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. 6. The Consequentialist Framework In the Consequentialist framework, we focus on the future effects of the possible courses of action, considering the people who will be directly or indirectly affected. So consequentialism would seem to support your tossing your garbage in the river. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Your intentional action was to toss the coin, not to toss the coin in the precise manner and position in which you ended up tossing it. Here is a brief overview of the main forms of consequentialism: Utilitarianism is a type of consequentialism that states that an action should be judged based on its ability to maximize happiness for most people. By Posted when did harry styles dad passed away In mckayla adkins house Her expectation that it will produce or promote that good outcome is her reason for performing the action. But if I desire something slightly and then intensely, which counts? We turn now to some of the most popular reasons to think consequentialism is false and some possible replies to these attacks. For example, a company wants to empty waste into a river; the people living downstream object. Although those three views disagree about which kinds of consequences matter, they agree that consequences are all that matters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. One might propose, for example, that an action is good insofar as it decreases the amount of meddling in the world. Arguably consequentialism is implicit in the very familiar conception of morality, shared by many cultures and traditions, which holds that moral perfection means loving all people, loving others as we love ourselves. But he remembers that stealing is generally regarded as wrong. 7. Duty-based . And since your dollar can usually do more good for desperate refugees than for yourself or your friends, consequentialism seems to hold that you ought to spend most of your dollars on strangers. 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. Why would two-level consequentialists punish only the guilty? Note that if what matters is the total amount, then it does not matter whether the happiness belongs to you or your friend or a strangeror even a dog, if dogs can have happiness. Utilitarianism is a theory of morality that advocates actions that foster happiness or pleasure and oppose actions that cause unhappiness or harm. There is disagreement about how consequentialism can best be formulated as a precise theory, and so there are various versions of consequentialism. Your email address will not be published. An action can show what kind of person I am even if it does not make me be that kind of person. Another reason is that when there is more equality in the main external goods, the basic conditions of peoples lives will be more similar and people will find it easier to understand and sympathize with each other. A third worry about the above argument begins from a view about the adjective good. The history of utilitarianism. (From 9), X is desirable means X will help satisfy desire if, X occurs. (Premise), The words good and desirable are synonyms. Concepts Unwrapped View All 36 short illustrated videos explain behavioral ethics concepts and basic ethics principles. This point can be expressed by saying that there is a 50% epistemic probability of heads, or that the reasonably expectable consequences of pushing the Toss button include a 50% epistemic chance of heads. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Viktoriya Sus (MA) and Peer Reviewed by Chris Drew (PhD), Machiavellianism: 10 Examples and Definition, Latent Inhibition: 10 Examples and Definition, Belief Perseverance: 10 Examples and Definition (Psychology), Transhumanism: 10 Examples and Definition. Perhaps an easier way to be free of bias is to have no sympathy for anyone. For example, if someone commits a crime out of necessity rather than greed, their punishment may differ significantly from another criminal whose motivations were purely selfish and maliciously intended. For example when faced with a difficult situation in your life, you can use ethical theories to assist you in making the right decision. Perhaps the most standard precise version of consequentialism is Plain Consequentialism. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Act consequentialism is flexible and can take account of any set of circumstances, however exceptional. Philosophers express this with greater precision: An action is morally right if and only if it does not violate the set of rules of behaviour whose general acceptance in the community would have the best consequences--that is, at least as good as any rival set of rules or no rules at all. A further worry about this new proposal is that it still does not directly tell us not to meddle. That is why the position of the hand matters to me. (From 5 and 6), 8. 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. Indeed, no one can know the future with certainty. Consequentialism and its critics. Perhaps, then, what counts as a good result is the amount of life that the action adds or subtracts in the world? But this reason for favoring consequentialism seems confused. Hedonism, on the other hand, says something is good if the consequence produces pleasure or avoids pain. To say that a certain pebble is good is meaningless. Oughts, Options, and Actualism., Mulgan, Tim, Two Conceptions of Benevolence., Murphy, Liam B. For example, in the first chapter the only real action as when she got picked up on the bus. Hence the reasonable expectation is that embezzling your grandmothers checks would have terrible consequences. New York: Routledge. Hence actions and policies that promote equality in external goods will cause more happiness by promoting a sense of community. Dual Consequentialism can say both of those things. 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. 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. while it sounds attractive in theory, its a very difficult system to apply to real life moral decisions because: every moral decision is a completely separate case that must be fully evaluated, individuals must research the consequences of their acts before they can make an ethically sound choice, doing such research is often impracticable, and too costly, the time taken by such research leads to slow decision-making which may itself have bad consequences, and the bad consequences of delay may outweigh the good consequences of making a perfect decision, but where a very serious moral choice has to be made, or in unusual circumstances, individuals may well think hard about the consequences of particular moral choices in this way, some people argue that if everyone adopted act consequentialism it would have bad consequences for society in general, this is because it would be difficult to predict the moral decisions that other people would make, and this would lead to great uncertainty about how they would behave, some philosophers also think that it would lead to a collapse of mutual trust in society, as many would fear that prejudice or bias towards family or other groups would more strongly influence moral decisions than if people used general moral rules based on consequentialism, fortunately the impracticality of act consequentialism as a general moral process means we don't have to worry much about this, Whether acts are good or bad depends on moral rules, Moral rules are chosen solely on the basis of their consequences, an act is right if and only if it results from the internalisation of a set of rules that would maximize good if the overwhelming majority of agents internalised this set of rules, Rule consequentialism gets round the practical problems of act consequentialism because the hard work has been done in deriving the rules; individuals don't generally have to carry out difficult research before they can take action, And because individuals can shortcut their moral decision-making they are much more likely to make decisions in a quick and timely way, Because rule consequentialism uses general rules it doesn't always produce the best result in individual cases, However, those in favour of it argue that it produces more good results considered over a long period than act consequentialism, One way of dealing with this problem - and one that people use all the time in everyday life - is to apply basic rules, together with a set of variations that cover a wide range of situations. It has a moral sense and an objective sense. Bentham, Jeremy (J. H. Burns and H. L. A. Hart, eds.). Natural Rights: Bentham and John Stuart Mill. In. Although the next chapter was intriguing and urged me to read on. people don't agree on what should be assessed in calculating good consequences. 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. 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. In virtue ethics, one's character emerges from a " relevant moral community". For a more extreme example of meddling, suppose that by using your grandmothers pension to contribute to efficient and thoughtful charities you can develop permanent clean water supplies for many distant villages, thus saving hundreds of people from painful early deaths and permitting economic development to begin. Now, rationality and objectivity are impartial; they do not favor one person over another. The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect., Foot, Philippa. Suppose you are on average just as happy as I am, but you live twice as long. People too pass away, and planets evaporate. Parental support is an important element in overweight prevention programs for children. If that is right, then consequentialism itself must be wrong because consequentialism is at root the idea that we ought to bring about good consequences. Consequentialism has both practical and philosophical problems: And these are things that many think are relevant to ethical judgements. If you get involved in meddling, can you trust yourself to meddle in the right direction and with adequate care? (From 7, crossing for you out of both sides of the equation), An action is good insofar as its overall consequences contain happiness. These variations are themselves derived in the same way as the general rules. It follows the thought that actions can be judged entirely on the result of the act in question. Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality,, Scheffler, Samuel. (From 1 and 2), An action is good insofar as its consequences include the satisfaction of desire. 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. 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). Now, Plain Consequentialism implies that what I did is morally wrong, and Plain Scalar Consequentialism implies that it is morally very bad. Expectable Consequentialism says that an action can be right even if I do not think reasonably about it at all, so long as it is the action I would have estimated to have the best consequences if I had done a reasonable job of making an estimate. We firmly agree, for example, that equality and rights are very important, that it is not wrong to favor our family and friends over strangers, that it is wrong to torture children, and so on. So consequentialism is correct. An example of act utilitarianism is a pharmaceutical company releasing a drug that has been governmentally approved with known side effects because the drug is able to help more people than are bothered by the minor side effects. by Jason Blakely December 02, 2020. C. Morality and the Theory of Rational Behavior., Hart, H. L. A. Web Privacy Policy
Continued deception about a serious matter is difficult, so at the outset you must take into account the chance that you will fail or give up. In this article we will look at what act consequentialism is and whether it . For example, suppose Paul is considering stealing money from his grandmother to help the poor. Internet Encyclopedia of Philisophy: Consequentialism. For instance, consequentialist theories are often cited when discussing the morality of euthanasia, capital punishment, and animal testing. London: Edward Elgar Publishing. Hence the consequences will probably be better. Perhaps these points are the basis of our sense of the importance of equality. Adams, Robert M. Motive Utilitarianism., Bales, R. Eugene. Not every version of consequentialism is anthropocentric, and as several contributors point out, some or all of the often very strong claims defended by non-anthropocentric thinkers can be expressed in a consequentialist framework. But you might think that whether my action was morally wrong depends on what consequences it would have been reasonable for me to expect, not on the actual consequences. 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. The most traditional view among Consequentialists is that the only kind of result that is good in itself is happiness. Negative consequentialists focus exclusively on avoiding unfavorable outcomes when evaluating decisions or behaviors (Scheffler, 2009). This moral theory deals with the rightness and wrongness of actions, which . In one sense if can be argued that the practice of theory of consequentialism has practical value and application in criminal justice. Stubbs, A. 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 could produce more overall happiness in the world by doing charity work tomorrow than by watching television all day tomorrow. A Critique of Utilitarianism, in. 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.
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