Search results

What, if anything, grounds the right of national defense? This essay explicates and defends a consequentialist answer to that question. After explaining the relevance and importance of this project, I clarify the meaning of consequentialism and explain how consequentialists understand and justify rights, including the right of national defense. International law enshrines that right. After explaining why it is correct to do so and why that right should be upheld, I examine some issues that this right leaves unsettled and probe its moral limits. I then reply to several objections to a consequentialist approach to national defense, pursuing in particular the criticism that consequentialists cannot justify the Allies' having taken up defensive arms against the Axis powers in World War II.

Consequentialism is a focal point of discussion and a driving force behind developments in moral philosophy. Recently, the debate has shifted in focus and in style: by seeking to consequentialize rival moral theories - in particular those with agent-relative characteristics - and by framing accounts in terms of reasons rather than in terms of value, an emerging new wave consequentialism has presented, at much higher levels of abstraction, theories that proved extremely flexible and powerful in meeting long-standing and influential objections. This volume on new wave consequentialism initiates and stimulates novel lines of discussion among proponents and their critics

Those put-off by the putative counterexamples to Act Consequentialism may consider Rule Consequentialism a more appealing alternative. Michael Huemer goes so far as to suggest that it is "not a crazy view." In this post, I'll explain why I think Rule Consequentialism is not well-supported -- and, at least as standardly formulated, may even be crazy.There are three main motivations for Rule Consequentialism (RC).  One -- most common amongst non-specialists -- stems from the sense that it would be better (in practice) for people to be guided by generally-reliable rules than to attempt to explicitly calculate expected utilities on a case-by-case basis.  But of course this is no reason to prefer RC as a criterion of right; this consideration instead pulls one towards multi-level act utilitarianism (on which the right decision procedure is something other than constant calculation).A better argument for RC (and the one that seems to motivate Huemer) is that it better systematizes our moral intuitions about cases.  But I think this is bad moral methodology -- matching superficial intuitions about cases is much less important than conforming to our deeper understanding of what really matters.  And RC is notoriously difficult to reconcile with the idea that promoting well-being (rather than blindly following rules) is what matters.Perhaps the most principled argument for RC stems from the contractualist ideal of acting on principles that are systematically justifiable to others.  Parfit's project in On What Matters was to argue that such contractualist foundations should lead one to Rule Consequentialism.  But as I argue in chapter 5 of Parfit's Ethics, it's obscure why we should want the rules we act upon, rather than simply our acts themselves, to be justifiable to others:[T]he
mere fact that the best uniform (or universal) principles recommend an act does not mean that this specific act is any good—the
principles' benefits may stem from other cases. This prompts a
couple of deep challenges to Parfit's rule-based approach: (i) When
an optimal act is ruled out by optimal principles, why prioritize
the principles—why should acting optimally ever be considered
"unjustifiable"? (ii) Different people might do better to be guided
by different principles—so, even on a rule- or principle-based
approach, why require uniformity?So I'm dubious of the putative reasons to favour RC in the first place.  Moreover, it seems to me that RC is subject to powerful objections.(1) It's subject to all the standard objections to views that aren't fundamentally consequentialist: (i) it gives bad (rule-fetishizing) answers to the question of what fundamentally matters; (ii) it implies that benevolent spectators should often hope that (fully-informed) agents act wrongly;  (iii) it's subject to the paradoxes of deontology, both old and new.(2) More distinctively, RC (at least as standardly formulated) has absurd implications in any scenario where the optimific rules were good to accept but not good to act upon.For example, an evil demon could threaten to torture us all unless we come to accept & approve of torturing puppies. (Crucially, the actual act of torturing puppies does not achieve any good whatsoever in this scenario; the belief is enough.) Obviously, one should not torture puppies in this case -- there isn't even the slightest reason to do so.This is very different from putative counterexamples to act consequentialism, where one might feel that the act "seems wrong", but you can at least see how there are weighty reasons counting in its favour (e.g. saving more lives!).  In this case, what we're able to show is that the Rule Consequentialist's assumed link between reasons for accepting a moral code and reasons for acting upon it is fallacious. There's just no essential connection there.  But that's the basis for the whole theory.Could RC be saved by reformulating it in terms of rules that are good just in virtue of the value of the acts that they lead to?  I don't recall seeing anyone else formulate the view this way, but it does seem an essential move in order to address this (otherwise decisive) objection.  The resulting view starts to look increasingly ad hoc, however -- once you've gone this far, why not simply accept the multi-level act utilitarian view that the rules are mere rules of thumb, rather than in-principle determinants of rightness or normative reasons for actions?(3) As Podgorski argues, RC is subject to the "distant world" objection, as it "determines what we ought to do by evaluating worlds that differ from ours in more than what is up to us."  It seems that this will inevitably lead to clearly bad recommendations in special cases (such as Podgorski's "duds").(Caleb Perl claims to "solve" this by jettisoning counterfactual evaluation in favour of the "consilience" principle that "the moral value of
a rule R is everything actual that's agent-neutrally
good or bad to the extent it's caused by actions that
R classifies as morally right."  But such a blinkered form of evaluation will surely be subject to even more egregious counterexamples.  E.g. suppose that R permits both good and extremely bad acts, but we're in a world where people have only performed the good acts.  We shouldn't conclude from this that R is a good rule, or that its non-actual (extremely bad!) instances are permissible.)(4) RC is a structural mess. As I explain in my (2012) 'Fittingness' paper:Rule consequentialists first identify the rules that are best in terms of
impartial welfare (or what's antecedently desirable), and then specify that
we have decisive reasons to act in accordance with these rules. Finally, they
might add, we have overriding reasons to desire that we so act. This way,
a prohibited act may be 'best' according to the antecedent (agent-neutral
welfarist) reasons for desire, and yet be bad (undesirable) all things considered. This avoids the incoherence [of preferring to act wrongly]. But it also brings
out how convoluted the view really is. It is recognizably consequentialist in
the sense that it takes (some) reasons for desire as fundamental, and subsequently derives an account of reasons for action. But then it goes back and
"fills in" further reasons for desire — trumping the original axiology — to
make sure that they fit the account of right action. In this sense it exhibits
a deontological streak: reasons for action are at least partly prior to reasons
for desire. In other words, the initial axiology includes only some values
(the 'non-moral', agent-neutral welfarist ones), and what's right serves to
determine the remaining ('post-moral', all things considered) good.I don't have a further argument against accepting a moral theory with this structure.  It's not strictly incoherent or anything. I just think it's unappealing once brought to light, especially when the view lacks significant compensating advantages.  (I think this also brings out why we might reasonably regard RC as not really consequentialist, despite its name.)

Consequentialism is a focal point of moral philosophy. Recently, new wave consequentialists have presented theories which proved extremely flexible and powerful in meeting influential objections. The volume explores new directions within this project, raises fundamental problems for it, and gives a balanced assessment of its scope in commonsense moral practice.

This book argues that critics of consequentialism have not been able to make a successful and comprehensive case against all versions of consequentialism because they have been using the wrong methodology. This methodology relies on the crucial assumption that consequentialist theories share a defining characteristic. This text interprets consequentialism, instead, as a family resemblance term. On that basis, it argues quite an ambitions claim, viz. that all versions of consequentialism should be rejected, including those that have been created in response to conventional criticisms. The book covers a number of classic themes in normative ethics, metaethics and, particularly, ethical methodology and also touches upon certain aspects of experimental moral philosophy. It is written in clear language and is analytic in its argumentative style. As such, the book should appeal to students, graduate students as well as professional academics with an interest in analytic moral philosophy.

Submitted manuscript version. Published version available at https://doi.org/10.1080/17449626.2018.1425218 . ; Elsewhere 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.

This dissertation is a discussion of the challenge that cases of over-determination pose to Act-Consequentialism. Although there are many realistic examples of such cases – for example, pollution, overfishing, or the election of an inappropriate politician – I consider structurally purer examples, one of which I call "Case One." Suppose that you and I independently shoot and kill a third person called "Victim." Our bullets arrive at the same time and each shot would have killed Victim by itself. Finally, Victim would not have been killed, if neither of us had pulled the trigger. According to the Standard Version of Act-Consequentialism, an action is wrong if and only if it has an alternative whose consequences would be intrinsically better. Case One challenges the Standard Version because there does not seem to be such an alternative to my action: Victim would have died by your shot if I had not shot him, and similar remarks apply to your action. The dissertation is structured as follows. After Chapter One, which briefly introduces the main issues of the dissertation, I turn to Chapter Two – "Preliminaries" – where I outline the Standard Version and highlight the main characteristics of over-determination cases. These cases are divided into cases of redundant difference making and cases of redundant causation. Cases of redundant causation are subdivided further into cases of causal over-determination and pre-emption. I make an important stipulation in this chapter. I say that our actions in Case One and similar cases are "redundant negative difference makers." In Chapter Three – "Replies" – I consider whether the proponent of Act-Consequentialism might question the intuition that you and I, respectively, act wrongly in Case One. The proponent might accept that we have this intuition but explain it away, or she might deny that we have the intuition and instead point to something else that is wrong in this kind of case. For example, she could suggest that although neither you nor I act wrongly individually, we act wrongly together. I argue that these replies are problematic. For instance, explaining away this intuition might also force us to explain away intuitions that support the Standard Version. In Chapter Four – "Causal Consequences" – I discuss an alternative version of Act-Consequentialism that might seem to fare better. The Standard Version interprets the term "outcome of an action" as referring to the entire possible world that would obtain, if the action were performed. The version I have in mind, the "Causal Consequences Version of Act-Consequentialism," understands "outcome of an action" as instead referring to the causal consequences of the action. It seems clear that you and I, respectively, cause the state of affairs that Victim dies in Case One. However, I show that the Causal Consequences Version has a number of unattractive implications. In Chapter Five – "the Non-Standard Version" – I suggest another alternative version of Act-Consequentialism. This version – the Non-Standard Version – implies that you and I act wrongly in Case One. Roughly, the Non-Standard Version says that an action is wrong if and only if it has an alternative whose consequences would be intrinsically better, or is a redundant negative difference maker. The Non-Standard Version is similar to a principle suggested by Derek Parfit. However, I shall argue that the Non-Standard Version is preferable to Parfit's principle. In Chapter Six – "Further Cases" – I discuss a number of cases that challenge the Non-Standard Version. For example, what would the Non-Standard Version imply in a case very similar to Case One but where I would have killed another person, if I had not shot Victim? I argue that the Non-Standard Version handles this and other problematic cases, and that it is therefore a plausible alternative to the Standard Version.

Personal relationships matter. Traditional Consequentialism, given its exclusive focus on agent-neutral goodness, struggles to account for this fact. A recent variant of the theory—one incorporating agent-relativity—is thought to succeed where its traditional counterpart fails. Yet, to secure this advantage, the view must take on certain normative and evaluative commitments concerning personal relationships. As a result, the theory permits cases in which agents do as they ought, yet later ought to prefer that they had done otherwise. That a theory allows such cases is a serious defect. We thus conclude that, in terms of how the theories handle personal relationships, agent-relative consequentialism fairs no better than its traditional counterpart.