On Specific Trade-Off Objections

Abstract

Abstract This chapter asks whether epistemic consequentialist views are wrong to sanction apparently particularly problematic trade-offs, in contrast to the previous chapter, which considered whether any trade-offs are permissible. This chapter argues that epistemic consequentialists should take three lessons from ethical consequentialists to respond to particular trade-off worries. First, epistemic consequentialism should be construed as an account of right belief, which must be distinguished from other notions like rational and justified belief. Second, the view should be ‘sophisticated’ in the same way that Railton argues that ethical consequentialism should be sophisticated. And third, the view should be ‘global’ in that it extends the consequentialist criterion of evaluation to dispositions, decision-making procedures, and the like. An important upshot of this chapter, one that’s repeated several times through out the book, is that the best versions of epistemic consequentialism mirror the structure of consequentialist views in ethics.