Consequentialism
April 29, 2025
Consequentialism
Consequences and Consequentialism
- Most moral theories: consequences are relevant in moral evaluation
- Consequentialism: consequences alone determine moral right and wrong
Consequences \(=\) value of the action \(+\) further effects
Consequentialism: Two Basic Parameters
- Describable consequences brought about by, or likely to be brought about by, the target of moral evaluation (an action, policy, social practice, etc.)
- A specification of those values that make the described consequences relevant for moral evaluation.
The Specification of Values Includes:
- A Theory of Value
(specifies which consequences are valuable) - A Theory of Right Action
(specifies the moral relationship between our actions, polices, etc and their valuable consequences)
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism: Theory of Value
- Welfarist: well-being is the only value
- Classical Utilitarians (e.g., Bentham and Mill) were hedonists about well-being
- Should we weigh pain/ill-being more heavily than pleasure/well-being?
Photo of Auto-Icon from UCL Bentham Project
Utility
By utility is meant that property in any object, whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness, (all this in the present case comes to the same thing) or (what comes again to the same thing) to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered: if that party be the community in general, then the happiness of the community: if a particular individual, then the happiness of that individual.
— Jeremy Bentham ([1789] 2015, sec. 1.3)
Utilitarianism: Theory of Right Action
- Classically: Maximize the specified value (e.g., well-being)
- Other possibilities:
- Minimize specified disvalue (e.g., suffering/ill-being)
- Satisficing: Aims at the “good enough”
Bentham’s Principle of Utility
an action or measure of government may be said to be conformable to the principle of utility, or, for shortness sake, to utility, (meaning with respect to the community at large) when the tendency it has to augment the happiness of the community is greater than any it has to diminish it.
— Jeremy Bentham ([1789] 2015, sec. 1.6)
Mill’s Greatest Happiness Principle
The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.
— J. S. Mill (1879, 9–10)
Vagueness and The Principle of Utility
Bentham’s and Mill’s statement of the Principle of Utility are (intentionally/unintentionally) vague/graduated.
- Bentham’s Principle of Utility principle refer to a greater tendency toward benefit than harm
- Mill’s Greatest Happiness Principle is stated in terms of proportionality
Principle of Utility (minus vagueness)
We are morally obligated to choose the course of action or rule whose consequences produce the greatest net aggregate utility for all those affected by the action or general observance of the rule.
– William Rehg (2017, sec. 3.1)
Act and Rule Utilitarianism
Act Utilitarianism
- Rules merely reduce the need for constant utilitarian calculation.
- Ultimately, the rightness or wrongness of individual actions will depend on the utility of the consequences that follow from those actions.
- If rule-breaking leads in a particular situation to the greater good, then break the rule.
Rule Utilitarianism
- Applies consequentialist analysis to rules, judging them by the consequences of their general adoption
- Actions are right or wrong according to whether or not they adhere to rules that optimize overall net utility.
Rehg’s Summary of Bentham’s Model
- Identify the possible alternative courses of actions or rules for the given circumstances
- For each alternative,
- describe the different consequences of that alternative for the “community,” which is everyone affected, or each of the stakeholders,
- take the perspective of each stakeholder and ask how the consequences affect his or her interests, calculating the net balance of pleasure over pain for that stakeholder; then
- aggregate the results for the individual stakeholders to obtain the net balance of pleasure over pain for the whole community; this result is the social utility of that alternative
- Compare the social utilities of the alternatives; the alternative with the highest social utility, as compared to the other alternatives, is morally obligatory (unless two or more alternatives tie, in which case these options quality as morally permissible)
Some Problems for Utilitarianism
- No Special Relationships and Duties
- Nothing is Supererogatory
- Distributive Indifference