Form Of Consequentialism Research Articles

Varieties of Consequentialism and Deontology in Theories of Tort Law

AbstractAn important contribution of Gregory Keating’s Reasonableness and Risk is to mount objections to law and economics whilst articulating an alternative deontological vision of tort law to that offered by corrective justice theorists. In this paper I offer two reservations about Keating’s account. One is that some forms of consequentialism can accommodate at least some aspects of his deontological theory, so we must be careful to distinguish between claims that strike at the heart of consequentialism and those that are only a problem for wealth maximisation. The second is that there are yet other varieties of deontology besides Kantianism and Keating’s alternative to it, and while I accept some of Keating’s claims, I think we should reject others. I will make the case for each of these reservations via discussion of three core features of Keating’s account: the harm/benefit asymmetry, the commitment to objective rather than subjective valuation, and his justification of strict liability.

Epistemic consequentialism as a metatheory of inquiry

The overall aim of this article is to reorient the contemporary debate about epistemic consequentialism. Thus far, the debate has to a large extent focused on whether standard theories of epistemic justification are consequentialist in nature and therefore vulnerable to certain trade-off cases where accepting a false or unjustified belief leads to good epistemic outcomes. We claim that these trade-offs raise an important—yet somewhat neglected—issue about the epistemic demands on inquiry. We first distinguish between two different kinds of epistemic evaluation, viz., backing evaluation and outcome evaluation, and then go on to outline and discuss a consequentialist metatheory about the right combinations of decision procedures to adopt in inquiry. Note that the piece is exploratory in the following sense: we try to explore epistemic evaluation in consequentialist terms, which involves stating a form of epistemic consequentialism, but also pointing to what non-consequentialist alternatives might be. Rather than trying to argue decisively for a particular conclusion, we aim to outline various intricate issues in an underexplored area of theorizing. In the course of doing this, we’ll transpose some well-known themes from discussions of consequentialism in ethics to the current debate about consequentialism in epistemology, e.g., agent-neutrality, options, and side-constraints.

Thinking ethically: The utilitarianism approach in moral decision making

Many of us routinely employ moral reasoning when making daily judgments. When questioned about why we feel we have a moral responsibility to execute specific behaviors, we frequently cite the pleasure or the avoidance of pain. Utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism, providing the most effective approach for determining ethically correct behavior in every given circumstance. In Jeremy Bentham's writings, he believed that the most promising method to achieving such an agreement was to choose the policy that would provide the most significant net benefits to society once the harms were considered. (1) The author will examine utilitarianism's definition, application, and issues in this work. (2) consequentialism, whose central tenet is that an act's ethical position depends on its consequences' value; (3) The difference between utilitarian rule and action. Both agree that actions should be judged based on their results, but the former interprets "actions" as classes of actions while the latter as particular actions. Moreover, (4) conclude the arguments against utilitarianism. It is asserted that utilitarianism cannot accommodate the magnitude of our commitments to others, the presence of moral and political rights, and the requirements of distributive justice. In a time that has been called by some the "time of self-interest," utilitarianism serves as a compelling reminder that morality demands us to look beyond the self for the sake of all.

Consequentialism and the Possibility of a Confucian-Mohist Encounter

Abstract Mohism and Confucianism are usually characterized as utilitarian and anti-utilitarian, respectively. This article argues that although Confucians do not espouse the kind of utilitarianism found in the Mozi, both Confucianism and Mohism qualify as forms of consequentialism in emphasizing that the outcome of a given behavior or action constitutes the basis for determining whether the latter qualifies as morally good. Through an analysis of the classical texts of the Analects and the Mengzi, I demonstrate that the similarities between the Confucian and Mohist perspectives on yi 義 and li 利 are much greater than their supposed differences, which have generally been taken for granted. Like Mohism, Confucianism upholds what we might call a “deliberated utilitarianism.”

Confucian Democracy in East Asia: A Discussion of Sungmoon Kim’s Democracy After Virtue: Toward Pragmatic Confucian Democracy

Confucian Democracy in East Asia: A Discussion of Sungmoon Kim’s <i>Democracy After Virtue: Toward Pragmatic Confucian Democracy</i>

« Comment ont-ils pu ? » : la responsabilité hyper-rationnelle et l’éthique managérialiste

The paper is a critique of managerialist ethics. I argue that managerialism utilizes a perverse form of consequentialism and a distorted version of Kantian deontology to create a culture that is both punitive and authoritarian. I attend to the question ‘How could they?’ by calling on Buber to reflect on dehumanization processes, which make it possible to harm others, and on managerialist deontology to explain how it is possible to feel virtuous whilst doing so. I examine how bureaucracy and hierarchy are utilized to dissipate responsibility and avoid blame at the level of institution, and to attribute blame to individual workers trying to do the right thing. Finally, I describe some of the problematic managerialist practices taking place in « Increasing Access to the Psychological Therapies » (IAPT) to show how they fashion and sustain an illusory reality.

Setiya on Consequentialism and Constraints

AbstractIt is widely held that agent-neutral consequentialism is incompatible with deontic constraints. Recently, Kieran Setiya has challenged this orthodoxy by presenting a form of agent-neutral consequentialism that he claims can capture deontic constraints. In this reply, we argue against Setiya's proposal by pointing to features of deontic constraints that his account fails to capture.

Developing a roadmap for the moral programming of smart technology

Smart technology is increasingly integrated in our ethical decision making. This raises questions as to how we should morally program technology. Deciding on moral programming depends on the moral intensity of the ethical issue. A moral intensity dashboard for engineers can help allocate the most suitable moral authority for a particular moral programming. Technology is not capable of ‘doing’ ethics the way humans do. This leaves forms of consequentialism and deontology as the most reasonable programming alternatives, using deontic logic as a starting point. Furthermore, it is very likely that in the more complicated settings, technology should have elements of meta ethics in its moral programming to adequately deal with scenarios that lead to conflicts in moral programming. We propose to use the calculation methods that stem from a comparative approach or the Expected Moral Value approach. All this has considerable consequences in how we should see moral programming in technology-driven ethical decision-making processes. We will therefore propose a roadmap for the moral programming of smart technology.

Just Better Utilitarianism.

Utilitarianism could still be a viable moral and political theory, although an emphasis on justice as distributing burdens and benefits has hidden this from current conversations. The traditional counterexamples prove that we have good grounds for rejecting classical, aggregative forms of consequentialism. A nonaggregative, liberal form of utilitarianism is immune to this rejection. The cost is that it cannot adjudicate when the basic needs of individuals or groups are in conflict. Cases like this must be solved by other methods. This is not a weakness in liberal utilitarianism, on the contrary. The theory clarifies what we should admit to begin with: that ethical doctrines do not have universally acceptable solutions to all difficult problems or hard cases. The theory also reminds us that not all problems are in this sense difficult or cases hard. We could alleviate the plight of nonhuman animals by reducing meat eating. We could mitigate climate change and its detrimental effects by choosing better ways of living. These would imply that most people's desire satisfaction would be partly frustrated, but liberal utilitarianism holds that this would be justified by the satisfaction of the basic needs of other people and nonhuman animals.

Is consequentialist perdurantism in moral trouble?

There has been a growing worry (raised in some form or another by Dean Zimmerman, Eric Olson, A.P. Taylor, Mark Johnston and Alex Kaiserman) that perdurantism—and similarly ontologically abundant views—is morally untenable. For perdurantism posits that, coinciding with persons, are person-like objects, and giving them their moral due seems to require giving up prudentially driven self-sacrifice. One way to avoid this charge is to adopt consequentialism. But Mark Johnston has argued that the marriage of consequentialism and perdurantism is in moral trouble. For, depending on the nature of time, consequentialist perdurantists either are unable to do more than one good act or they are morally obliged to adopt a repugnant form of ageism. I argue both that perdurantist consequentialism doesn’t have the latter implication, and that there’s at least one plausible form of consequentialism that perdurantists can adopt to avoid the former implication.

Parfit on Act Consequentialism

AbstractIn the first two volumes of On What Matters, Derek Parfit argues that three major normative theories – Kantianism, Contractualism and Rule Consequentialism – are, in their most defensible forms, compatible, and can be reconciled in what he calls ‘Triple Theory’. This has led many to assume that Parfit does not believe that Act Consequentialism is a defensible form of Consequentialism. We draw on correspondence with Parfit to show that this assumption is incorrect. We then consider Parfit's efforts, in the third volume of On What Matters, to narrow the differences between Act Consequentialism and the triple theory, in part by treating impartial rationality as an external rival to morality, in much the same way that egoism is an external rival to morality. We argue that Parfit's attempts to bridge the gap between Act Consequentialism and Triple Theory meet with only limited success.

Pandemics, Quarantines, Utility, and Dignity

Medical quarantines were once common in the United States, but in the last 50 years they have been used infrequently by the government. That changed with the spread of the novel Coronavirus, and the resulting COVID-19 illness, in 2020. Cruise ships where the virus had taken hold were quarantined and passengers were prohibited from disembarking. Residents of towns in Spain, and an entire province of China, were prevented from leaving by their respective governments. This Article argues that the permissibility of coercive quarantines is best understood as an example of threshold deontology. Threshold deontology is the view that individual human dignity must prevail over the common good, but that in moments of extreme emergency, when a “threshold” has been reached, the reverse is true: the common good can trump individual rights. Part I provides a brief overview of the use of coercive quarantines to fight COVID-19 and the surprising lack of objection that these measures triggered. Part II explores the unmistakably utilitarian logic behind public health generally and quarantines specifically. Then, Part III introduces the concept of human dignity as a constraint on utilitarian public health by surveying three representative jurisdictions: The United States, German domestic law, and the European Convention on Human Rights. Part III concludes that even liberal democracies vary subtly but significantly in how strongly they protect human dignity and that these differing levels of commitment to human dignity help explain why some legal cultures have been so quick to resort to quarantines, while other communities have been reluctant. Finally, Part IV suggests that jurisdictions that are usually protective of individual rights but decide to fight COVID-19 with coercive quarantines are best understood as operating under the sway of threshold deontology. This Article does not defend threshold deontology as a moral theory but does argue that it is best understood as a covert form of indirect consequentialism. Moreover, this Article concludes that threshold deontology is the key moral battleground for debating the quarantine power during the COVID-19 era.

Normative Externalism, by Brian Weatherson

Rohana faces a choice where she can produce either a better outcome by lying or a worse outcome by telling the truth. She justifiably, but falsely, believes in a Kantian moral theory that prohibits lying. (She encountered persuasive defences of Kantian ethics in college, and never encountered the rebuttals to those defences.) In fact, the true moral theory is a form of consequentialism, according to which Rohana should lie for the greater good. Pretty clearly, then, there is an important sense in which Rohana should lie. (For instance, it is what she would do if she were ideally informed and motivated.) But is there also an important sense in which Rohana should tell the truth, since she justifiably accepts a moral principle that tells her to do so? Aldaris faces a choice where he can either (A) benefit a human being by 10 welfare units, (B) benefit a pig by 20 welfare units, or (C) benefit the human being and the pig by 9 welfare units each. (This case is a slight variant of one described by MacAskill, 2014, pp. 9–11.) Aldaris is uncertain which of two moral theories is true, giving equal credence to each: a hedonistic utilitarian theory, according to which he ought to maximize total welfare, or a contractualist theory, according to which (in situations like this) he ought to maximize human welfare. Aldaris is a moral philosopher who has thought long and carefully about these two theories, and his uncertainty between them is justified. But in fact, the contractualist theory is true. So clearly there is a sense in which Aldaris should choose (A), since this is the option preferred by the true moral theory. But is there also a sense in which he should choose (C), since it is nearly optimal according to both moral theories in which he has credence?

The world destruction argument

ABSTRACT The most common argument against negative utilitarianism is the world destruction argument, according to which negative utilitarianism implies that if someone could kill everyone or destroy the world, it would be her duty to do so. Those making the argument often endorse some other form of consequentialism, usually traditional utilitarianism. It has been assumed that negative utilitarianism is less plausible than such other theories partly because of the world destruction argument. So, it is thought, someone who finds theories in the spirit of utilitarianism attractive should not go for negative utilitarianism, but should instead pick traditional utilitarianism or some other similar theory such as prioritarianism. I argue that this is a mistake. The world destruction argument is not a reason to reject negative utilitarianism in favour of these other forms of consequentialism, because there are similar arguments against such theories that are at least as persuasive as the world destruction argument is against negative utilitarianism.

A modesty proposal

Accuracy-first epistemology aims to show that the norms of epistemic rationality can be derived from the effective pursuit of accuracy. This paper explores the prospects within accuracy-first epistemology for vindicating “modesty”: the thesis that ideal rationality permits uncertainty about one’s own rationality. I argue that accuracy-first epistemology faces serious challenges in accommodating three forms of modesty: uncertainty about what priors are rational, uncertainty about whether one’s update policy is rational, and uncertainty about what one’s evidence is. I argue that the problem stems from the representation of epistemic decision problems. The appropriate representation of decision problems, and corresponding decision rules, for (diachronic) update policies should be a generalization of decision problems and decision rules for (synchronic) coherence. I argue that extant accounts build in conflicting assumptions about which kinds of information about the believer should be used to structure epistemic decision problems. In particular, extant accounts of update build in a form of epistemic consequentialism. Related forms of epistemic consequentialism have been shown to generate problems for accuracy-first epistemology’s purported justifications of probabilism, conditionalization, and the principal principle. These results are vindicated only with nonconsequentialist epistemic decision theories. I close with suggestive examples of how, with a fully nonconsequentialist representation of epistemic decision problems, accuracy-first epistemology can allow for rational modesty.

Institutional Function Consequentialism

In this paper, I present a new account of normative ethics that I call Institutional Function Consequentialism. It is a form of indirect consequentialism that focuses on the optimal harmony of institutions rather than on rules, motives or acts. It proposes one normative foundation for all social order that is composed of different institutions. This account can also be seen as method of consequentializing different rival theories such as Aristotelianism, stoicism, utilitarianism, contractarianism and contractualism.

How could they?: Hyper-rational responsibility and the ethics of managerialism

The paper is a critique of managerialist ethics. I argue that managerialism utilises a perverse form of consequentialism and a distorted version of Kantian deontology to create a culture that is both punitive and authoritarian. I attend to the question ‘How could they?’ by calling on Buber to reflect on dehumanization processes which make it possible to harm others, and on managerialist deontology to explain how it is possible to feel virtuous whilst doing so. I examine how bureaucracy and hierarchy are utilised to dissipate responsibility and avoid blame at the level of institution, and to attribute blame to individual workers trying to do the right thing. Finally, I describe some of the problematic managerialist practices taking place in IAPT, to show how they fashion and sustain an illusory reality.

Reliabilism without Epistemic Consequentialism

This paper argues that reliabilism can plausibly live without epistemic consequentialism, either as part of a non‐consequentialist normative theory or as a non‐normative account of knowledge on a par with certain accounts of the metaphysics of perception and action. It argues moreover that reliabilism should not be defended as a consequentialist theory. Its most plausible versions are not aptly dubbed ‘consequentialist’ in any sense that genuinely parallels the dominant sense in ethics. Indeed, there is no strong reason to believe reliabilism was ever seriously intended as a form of epistemic consequentialism. At the heart of its original motivation was a concern about the necessity of non‐accidentality for knowledge, a concern quite at home in a non‐consequentialist or non‐normative setting. Reliabilism's connection to epistemic consequentialism was an accretion of the ’80s, and a feature of only one of its formulations in that decade.

Consequentialism and Moral Worth

Sometimes, agents do the right thing for the right reason. What's the normative significance of this phenomenon? According to proponents of the special status view, when an agent acts for the right reason, her actions enjoy a special normative status, namely, worthiness. Proponents of this view claim that self-effacing forms of consequentialism cannot say this plausible thing, and, worse, are blocked from having a perspicuous view of matters by the self-effacing nature of their consequentialism. In this article, I argue that this claim is based on an illicit assumption. I show that whatever version of the special status view proponents of that view prefer, self-effacing consequentialists can adopt a version of it. Moreover, I show that proponents of extant versions of the special status view have reason to prefer the specific version of that view I articulate on behalf of self-effacing consequentialists.

Spinozian consequentialism of ethics of social consequences

Abstract The present article deals with specific normative concepts of Spinoza’s ethical system and compares them to certain aspects of the theory of ethics of social consequences. At first, a way to approach the problem of normativity in Spinoza is presented, concentrating on the obligatory character of rational - or intellectual - motives. Then, theoretical evidence is presented which links Spinoza to normative-ethical consequentialism. The basis for a consequentialist model of Spinoza’s ethics is the concept of perfection, and on this basis it seems possible to consider its compatibility with non-utilitarian forms of consequentialism, such as ethics of social consequences. Conclusively, the paper’s aim is to present the possibility of considering Spinozian consequentialism as a non-utilitarian consequentialism, while considering ethics of social consequences as a contemporary form of Spinozian consequentialism.