Consequentialist View Research Articles

Problems posing as solutions: Criticising pragmatism as a paradigm for mixed research

Mixed research is a methodology of growing importance both within and without education. This type of research forces researchers to reconcile conflicting ways of justifying and understanding research with results that have the potential to be forward pointing for all researchers. As mixed research has grown, mixed research has gained an increasingly solidified identity which is increasingly associated with the pragmatic paradigm. This paper seeks to describe and criticise pragmatism as a paradigm for mixed research. We identify six features of pragmatism which we argue render it unfit for purpose. 1. That it is a “paradigm of convenience” 2. That it takes a consequentialist view of good research. 3. That it takes a consequentialist view of truth. 4. That it assumes the answers to epistemic questions is “somewhere in the middle” 5. That it priorities the research question, rather than ontology or epistemology 6. That it treats itself as a prerequisite for mixed research. We argue that in prioritising flexibility and practicality over principles, pragmatism loses the ability to offer guidance to researchers. Furthermore, many of the issues with pragmatism arise from a conflation of paradigm and method. I.e., by thinking that there are quantitative and qualitative paradigms. We conclude that traditional paradigms are better served to act as a paradigm for mixed research.

Police Ethics in Rural Contexts: A Left Realist Consequentialist View

This article presents crime survey data from the state of West Virginia in the United States showing that, controlling for structural conditions, community atmosphere is significantly related to crime, violence and many other social problems in rural places. These results help identify measurable and achievable progressive desired ends in rural policing, replacing law enforcement outputs (for example, arrests, gun and drug seizures) with safe, strong community outcomes as the summum bonum (i.e, ultimate outcome) of policing. Findings show that interdependent communities where police are partners with residents are the safest, while conflict communities where the police are viewed as adversaries are least safe. These results suggest a left realist consequentialist approach to police ethics to dismantle the hegemony of draconian policies and practices.

Synthesis and Properties of Optimally Value-Aligned Normative Systems

The value alignment problem is concerned with the design of systems that provably abide by our human values. One approach to this challenge is through the leverage of prescriptive norms that, if carefully designed, are able to steer a multiagent system away from harmful outcomes and towards more beneficial ones. In this work, we first present a general methodology for the automated synthesis of value aligned normative systems, based on a consequentialist view of values. In the second part, we provide analytical tools to examine such value aligned normative systems, namely the Shapley value of individual norms and the compatibility of several values under a fixed set of norms. We illustrate all of our contributions with a running example of a society of agents where taxes are collected and redistributed according to a set of parametrised norms.

Fragmented Pragmatism: On Sungmoon Kim’s Pragmatic Confucian Democracy

Fragmented Pragmatism: On Sungmoon Kim’s Pragmatic Confucian Democracy

KANTIANS MAKE BAD FRIENDS; SUSPENDING MORAL RESPONSIBILITY IN RELATIONSHIPS

In this essay, I will briefly examine the Kantian ethical tradition as inherited by Christine Korsgaard. I argue that the Kantian is committed to a morally impractical conclusion: that she must hold others morally responsible without exception. I explain the concept of moral responsibility in the Kantian and consequentialist frameworks, and then illustrate why the Kantian’s is an impractical imperative through an examination of its interpersonal effects. I end by suggesting that a consequentialist view offers a more robust framework for moral responsibility.

The amoral atheist? A cross-national examination of cultural, motivational, and cognitive antecedents of disbelief, and their implications for morality.

There is a widespread cross-cultural stereotype suggesting that atheists are untrustworthy and lack a moral compass. Is there any truth to this notion? Building on theory about the cultural, (de)motivational, and cognitive antecedents of disbelief, the present research investigated whether there are reliable similarities as well as differences between believers and disbelievers in the moral values and principles they endorse. Four studies examined how religious disbelief (vs. belief) relates to endorsement of various moral values and principles in a predominately religious (vs. irreligious) country (the U.S. vs. Sweden). Two U.S. M-Turk studies (Studies 1A and 1B, N = 429) and two large cross-national studies (Studies 2–3, N = 4,193), consistently show that disbelievers (vs. believers) are less inclined to endorse moral values that serve group cohesion (the binding moral foundations). By contrast, only minor differences between believers and disbelievers were found in endorsement of other moral values (individualizing moral foundations, epistemic rationality). It is also demonstrated that presumed cultural and demotivational antecedents of disbelief (limited exposure to credibility-enhancing displays, low existential threat) are associated with disbelief. Furthermore, these factors are associated with weaker endorsement of the binding moral foundations in both countries (Study 2). Most of these findings were replicated in Study 3, and results also show that disbelievers (vs. believers) have a more consequentialist view of morality in both countries. A consequentialist view of morality was also associated with another presumed antecedent of disbelief—analytic cognitive style.

Contractualist age rationing under outbreak circumstances.

Age rationing is a central issue in the health care priority-setting literature, but it has become ever more salient in the light of the Covid-19 outbreak, where health authorities in several countries have given higher priority to younger over older patients. But how is age rationing different under outbreak circumstances than under normal circumstances, and what does this difference imply for ethical theories? This is the topic of this paper. The paper argues that outbreaks such as that of Covid-19 involve special circumstances that change how age should influence our prioritization decisions, and that while this shift in circumstances poses a problem for consequentialist views such as utilitarianism and age-weighted consequentialism, contractualism is better equipped to cope with it. The paper then offers a contractualist prudential account of age rationing under outbreak circumstances.

Later Mohist ethics and philosophical progress in ancient China

ABSTRACT The writings of the later Mohists are generally taken to contain several updates to the consequentialist ethical view held by the Mohist school. In this paper, I defend one interpretation of those updates and how they may have served, within the Mohists’ argumentative context, to make their views more defensible. I argue that we should reject A.C. Graham’s prominent interpretation, on which the later Mohists’ argumentative strategy is to develop a conception of the a priori and to ground their ethical view in a form of a priori rationalism. I contend, instead, that the strength of the later Mohists’ ethical view comes largely from their adoption of a subjective criterion for identifying what counts as a benefit within their consequentialist view. I show how the adoption of this subjective criterion fits within a larger trend in later Mohist thought of coming to terms with the diversity of people’s evaluative standpoints, and further show how it equips the later Mohists with worthwhile responses to their philosophical rivals.

The Unified Theory of Punishment

Most of the history of the philosophy of punishment is about our making choice of which theory to support and defend against all the rest. Over time, there have been several attempts aiming to bring two or more theories together in new hybrid formulations. This penal pluralism can be too quickly dismissed as conceptually contradictory. At face value, there is a clear and undeniable clash between, say, supporting retributivism and consequentialist views like deterrence or rehabilitation. For example, the punishments that retributivism might support as ‘deserved’ may lack or run counter to what might cause some desired effect. Traditionally, the way this clash has been handled most frequently – as seen in Chapter 5 – is to say the justification for deciding who to punish is governed by one goal (e.g., typically retributivist desert) and the amount of punishment distributed to any deserving person is determined by a second, different goal (e.g., usually deterrence). In giving each goal a different space, they avoid confrontation. However, what this formula gains in practicability it loses in showing any theoretical coherence. As we have seen, if desert is so important to justify punishment, why is it irrelevant to setting its amount? And what necessary connection exists between them holding the two together as one integrated theory? For these reasons, critics have claimed that hybrid theories are unstable at best and incoherent at worst. Given the way most are formulated, it is easy to agree – but yet it would be a serious mistake to write off the possibility and plausibility of hybrid theories if they might overcome those concerns. This newly rewritten chapter for this second edition introduces and defends a new hybrid theory: the unified theory of punishment.1 Instead of taking a side between retributivist and other positions, the unified theory is an attempt to show how multiple penal goals can be brought together coherently in a single framework, or what might be called a ‘grand unifying theory’ of punishment succeeding where others have failed. I will argue that not only is the unified theory possible, but that it is most compelling and best able to address the complexity of criminal cases and deliver multiple benefits in a measure and evidenced way, providing a new way of expanding restorative practices as well. The structure of this chapter is as follows. First, it begins examining penal pluralism as found in sentencing guidelines, but lacking any framework for how different penal purposes can be coherently applied in any consistent way. Second, I will provide an overview of philosophers starting primarily with Hegel who first attempted to create a new unified theory. Thirdly, I will next formulate my own model for how a unified theory might work. Key to this model is our ability to evidence whether its overarching aim – of protecting and maintaining rights – is fulfilled in a significant change in my thinking. The chapter then considers several possible objections.

Evaluating the Scientific Uses of Animals: A Virtue-Consequentialist Approach for Harm/Benefit Analyses

Abstract The topic of this contribution is the moral justification of the use of non-human animals in scientific research. First, we will discuss the position of leading antispeciesist approaches of animal ethics, arguing that a radical position is not tenable and justification of some animal use in research can be given based on the importance of science for human civilization. Such use must be justified case by case. Therefore, the harm-benefit analysis will be introduced, as an example of a case-by-case scenario. We will describe the challenge encountered by the evaluators of project proposals, and possible ways of considering harms and benefits in basic, translational and regulatory research, minimizing harms and possible future scenarios. Our approach can be regarded as a virtue consequentialist view of the ethics of human/animal relationships in scientific use, where the development of a morally appreciable character is a key topic for the education of scientists.

Consequentialism and Its demands: The Role of Institutions

It isn’t saying much to claim that morality is demanding; the question, rather, is: can morality be so demanding that we have reason not to follow its dictates? According to many, it can, if that morality is a consequentialist one. This paper takes the plausibility and coherence of this objection – the Demandingness Objection – as a given. Our question, therefore, is how to respond to the Objection. We put forward a response that we think has not received sufficient attention in the literature: institutional consequentialism. This is a consequentialist view that, however, requires institutional systems, and not individuals, to follow the consequentialist principle. We first introduce the Objection, then explain the theory of institutional consequentialism and how it responds to the objection. In the remainder of the paper, we defend the view against potential objections.

Propositions and the Meaning of ‘Ought’

Matthew Chrisman’s new book, The Meaning of ‘Ought’: Beyond Descriptivism and Expressivism in Metaethics, presents a semantic treatment of the deontic modal operator Ought designed to address the problem of subject-sensitivity: why, for example, “I ought to dance with you” might be true, while “You ought to dance with me” is false. Such sentence-pairs challenge the view that Ought is an operator on propositions—an assumption which is common ground amongst both classical and much contemporary work. Chrisman argues that rather than propositions, the operator Ought takes as its argument a non-propositional formal object called a practition. In this review, I discuss the inspiration and formal features of this treatment. While I argue that the distinction between practitions and propositions is not adequately characterized in Chrisman’s compositional semantics, subject-sensitivity raises interesting questions about the metaethical assumptions at play in the formal semantics—including the worry that treating Ought as a propositional operator illicitly begs the question in favor of broadly consequentialist views.

Moral Nimby-Ism? Understanding Societal Support for Monetary Compensation to Plasma Donors in Canada

The growing demand for plasma, especially for the manufacture of therapeutic products, creates an urgent need for a careful discussion on the relative merits of different procurement and allocation systems in a way that addresses the increasing demand while abiding by the prevailing moral values in a society. We conducted a randomized survey experiment with a representative sample of 826 Canadian residents to assess attitudes toward legalizing the compensation to plasma donors, a practice that is illegal in several Canadian provinces. We found no evidence of widespread societal opposition to payments to plasma donors, because over 70% of respondents reported that they would support compensation. The support was higher for paying plasma donors in Australia and the United States than in Canada, but the differences were small, suggesting a weak role for “moral NIMBY-ism” or moral relativism in explaining the findings. Moral concerns were the highest-rated reason that respondents gave for being against payment, together with concerns for the safety of plasma supplied by compensated donors, although most of the plasma in Canada does come from compensated American donors. Among those in favor of legalizing compensation for donors (in Canada as well as in Australia), the highest-rated motive was to guarantee a higher domestic supply. Finally, roughly half of those who declared to be against payments reported that they would reconsider their position if the domestic supply and imports were insufficient to meet domestic demand. Most Canadians, therefore, seem to espouse a consequentialist view to issues related to the procurement of plasma.

Moral NIMBY-ism? Understanding Societal Support for Monetary Compensation to Plasma Donors in Canada

The growing demand for plasma, especially for the manufacture of therapeutic products, creates an urgent need for a careful discussion on the relative merits of different procurement and allocation systems in a way that addresses the increasing demand while abiding by the prevailing moral values in a society. We conducted a randomized survey experiment with a representative sample of 826 Canadian residents to assess attitudes toward legalizing the compensation to plasma donors, a practice that is illegal in several Canadian provinces. We found no evidence of widespread societal opposition to payments to plasma donors, because over 70% of respondents reported that they would support compensation. The support was higher for paying plasma donors in Australia and the United States than in Canada, but the differences were small, suggesting a weak role for “moral NIMBY-ism” or moral relativism in explaining the findings. Moral concerns were the highest-rated reason that respondents gave for being against payment, together with concerns for the safety of plasma supplied by compensated donors, although most of the plasma in Canada does come from compensated American donors. Among those in favor of legalizing compensation for donors (in Canada as well as in Australia), the highest-rated motive was to guarantee a higher domestic supply. Finally, roughly half of those who declared to be against payments reported that they would reconsider their position if the domestic supply and imports were insufficient to meet domestic demand. Most Canadians, therefore, seem to espouse a consequentialist view to issues related to the procurement of plasma.

Institutional consequentialism and global governance

ABSTRACTElsewhere we have responded to the so-called demandingness objection to consequentialism – that consequentialism is excessively demanding and is therefore unacceptable as a moral theory – by introducing the theoretical position we call institutional consequentialism. This is a consequentialist view that, however, requires institutional systems, and not individuals, to follow the consequentialist principle. In this paper, we first introduce and explain the theory of institutional consequentialism and the main reasons that support it. In the remainder of the paper, we turn to the global dimension where the first and foremost challenge is to explain how institutional consequentialism can deal with unsolved global problems, such as poverty, war and climate change. In response, following the general idea of institutional consequentialism, we draw up three alternative routes: relying on existing national, transnational and supranational institutions; promoting gradual institutional reform; and advocating radical changes to the status quo. We evaluate these routes by describing normatively relevant properties of the existing global institutional system, as well as by showing what institutional consequentialism can say about alternatives to it: a world government; and multi-layered sovereignty/neo-medieval system.

The pitfalls of qualified moral veganism. A critique of Jan Deckers' holistic health approach to animal ethics.

I critically examine Jan Deckers' position in Animal (De)liberation, where he defends two main views. The first is "qualified moral veganism": Most humans have a duty to abstain from consuming animal products, even if there are circumstances in which doing so is justified. The author argues, on the one hand, from a pan-sentientist view that attributes sentience to all elementary entities and their compounds. Thus, all living things (such as animals and plants) have a capacity for positive and negative experiences. On the other hand, he develops a consequentialist view that assigns moral agents the unconditional duty to promote their own "holistic health." This is partly constituted by the agent's "moral health," that is, her acting in a morally justified way. On Deckers' view, moral agents must care for the health of all living entities, give greater weight to the interests of organisms to which they are more closely biologically related, and respect the integrity of nature. Diets containing animal products have a very high negative health impact, because of how they affect the environment, human food security, and the well-being of nonhuman animals. In addition, even though plants are sentient, they are likely less so than animals, and their interests must be given less weight. Therefore, most humans should shift to a vegan diet. Deckers' second proposal is that a qualified ban on the consumption of animal products should be enacted. After discarding other alternative strategies, Deckers defends its feasibility relying on data obtained via a series of surveys. Though the argument partly succeeds in developing a coherent account accommodating the author's intuitions, I conclude that his ontological and normative frameworks remain too underdeveloped, his appeal to biological relatedness has implausible implications, and the methodology he uses in defence of his political position is problematic.

Ethical living: relinking ethics and consumption through care in Chile and Brazil.

Mainstream conceptualizations of 'ethical consumption' equate the notion with conscious, individual, market-mediated choices motivated by ethical or political aims that transcend ordinary concerns. Drawing on recent sociology and anthropology of consumption literature on the links between ordinary ethics and ethical consumption, this article discusses some of the limitations of this conceptualization. Using data from 32 focus groups conducted in Chile and Brazil, we propose a conceptualization of ethical consumption that does not centre on individual, market-mediated choices but understands it at the level of practical outcomes, which we refer to as different forms of 'ethical living'. To do that, we argue, we need to depart from the deontological understanding of ethics that underpins mainstream approaches to ethical consumption and adopt a more consequentialist view focusing on ethical outcomes. We develop these points through describing one particular ordinary moral regime that seemed to be predominant in participants' accounts of ethics and consumption in both Chile and Brazil: one that links consumption and ethics through care. We show that the moral regime of care leads to 'ethical outcomes', such as energy saving or limiting overconsumption, yet contrary to the mainstream view of ethical consumption emphasizing politicized choice expressed through markets, these result from following ordinary ethics, often through routines of practices.

Consequentialism with Wrongness Depending on the Difficulty of Doing Better

Moral wrongness comes in degrees. On a consequentialist view of ethics, the wrongness of an act should depend, I argue, in part on how much worse the act’s consequences are compared with those of its alternatives and in part on how difficult it is to perform the alternatives with better consequences. I extend act consequentialism to take this into account, and I defend three conditions on consequentialist theories. The first is consequentialist dominance, which says that, if an act has better consequences than some alternative act, then it is not more wrong than the alternative act. The second is consequentialist supervenience, which says that, if two acts have equally good consequences in a situation, then they have the same deontic status in the situation. And the third is consequentialist continuity, which says that, for every act and for any difference in wrongness δ greater than zero, there is an arbitrarily small improvement of the consequences of the act which would, other things being equal, not change the wrongness of that act or any alternative by more than δ. I defend a proposal that satisfies these conditions.

Core values versus common sense: consequentialist views appear less rooted in morality.

When a speaker presents an opinion, an important factor in audiences' reactions is whether the speaker seems to be basing his or her decision on ethical (as opposed to more pragmatic) concerns. We argue that, despite a consequentialist philosophical tradition that views utilitarian consequences as the basis for moral reasoning, lay perceivers think that speakers using arguments based on consequences do not construe the issue as a moral one. Five experiments show that, for both political views (including real State of the Union quotations) and organizational policies, consequentialist views are seen to express less moralization than deontological views, and even sometimes than views presented with no explicit justification. We also demonstrate that perceived moralization in turn affects speakers' perceived commitment to the issue and authenticity. These findings shed light on lay conceptions of morality and have practical implications for people considering how to express moral opinions publicly.

Hooker on Rule-Consequentialism and Virtue

InIdeal Code, Real World, Brad Hooker proposes an account of the relation between his rule-consequentialism and virtue according to which the virtues (1) have intrinsic value and (2) are identical with the dispositions that are ‘essential parts of accepting the rules’ of the ideal code. While it is not clear whether Hooker actually intends to endorse this account or only intends to moot it for discussion, I argue that for him to adopt it would be a mistake. Not only would this mean that his moral theory was no longer properly a consequentialist view at all, but it would commit him to inconsistent views about how normative theories – in particular theories of morality in the deontic sense and theories of virtue – are justified.