Against Maximizing Act-Consequentialism

Journal of Philosophy

A number of features that we might expect to exist in plausible moral theories are presented and discussed: The existence of permissible morally good acts that go beyond what is morally required; Reasonable level of blameworthiness of moral agents; and finally, the moral impermissibility to compel others to do the right thing on certain occasions. A number of remedies for objective and expected value (subjective) act consequentialism are discussed, including scalar utilitarianism, satisficing consequentialism and progressive consequentialism, in an effort to address some of these worries.

A classic objection to act-consequentialism is that it is overdemanding: it requires agents to bear too many costs for the sake of promoting the impersonal good. I develop the complementary objection that act-consequentialism is underdemanding: it fails to acknowledge that agents have moral reasons to bear certain costs themselves, even when it would be impersonally better for others to bear these costs.

Morality seems important, in the sense that there are practical reasons - at least for most of us, most of the time - to be moral. A central theoretical motivation for consequentialism is that it appears clear that there are practical reasons to promote good outcomes, but mysterious why we should care about non-consequentialist moral considerations or how they could be genuine reasons to act. In this paper we argue that this theoretical motivation is mistaken, and that because many arguments for consequentialism rely upon it, the mistake substantially weakens the overall case for consequentialism. We argue that there is indeed a theoretical connection between good states and reasons to act, because good states are those it is fitting to desire and there is a conceptual connection between the fittingness of a motive and reasons to perform the acts it motivates. But while some of our motives are directed at states, others are directed at acts themselves. We contend that just as the fittingness of desires for states generates reasons to promote the good, the fittingness of these act-directed motives generates reasons to do other things. Moreover, we argue that an act’s moral status consists in the fittingness of act-directed feelings of obligation to perform or avoid performing it, so the connection between fitting motives and reasons to act explains reasons to be moral whether or not morality directs us to promote the good. This, we contend, de-mystifies how there could be non-consequentialist reasons that are both moral and practical.

Theoria, 2008

there is no separate entry for "consequentialism"; the reader is referred to "utilitarianism", and this is in turn explained as "the moral theory that an action is morally right if and only if it produces at least as much good (utility) for all people affected by the action as any alternative action the person could do instead". 2 This is a sufficient starting point for my purposes in this paper. It indicates, for example, that the kind of theory I have in mind is "act consequentialism", rather than "rule consequentialism". A well-known consequentialist theory would be the hedonistic utilitarianism described in the first two chapters of G.E. Moore's Ethics; another example would be Moore's own nonhedonistic "ideal" utilitarianism proposed in the same book. 3 Moore takes (hedonistic) utilitarianism to contain the "principle" that "a voluntary action is right, whenever and only when the agent could not, even if he had chosen, have done any other action instead, which would have caused more pleasure than the one he did do". 4 Notice, however, that, for Moore, utilitarianism does not only say "that the producing of a maximum of pleasure is a characteristic, which did and will belong, as a matter of fact, to all right voluntary actions (actual or possible)", it also says that "it is because they possess this characteristic that such actions are right". 5 I follow Moore here. I take consequentialism to be an explanatory theory of moral rightness; it is neither a statement of a mere correlation between rightness and a certain empirical and/or evaluative property, nor a decision procedure to be followed in actual situations of choice. The distinction between theories of rightness and practical decision procedures is probably quite old. It appears to go back at least to Henry Sidgwick. 6 It is quite clearly

Philosophical Studies, 2002

The simple idea behind act-consequentialism isthat we ought to choose the action whoseoutcome is better than that of any alternativeaction. In a recent issue of this journal, ErikCarlson has argued that given a reasonableinterpretation of alternative actions thissimple idea cannot be upheld but that the newtheory he proposes nevertheless preserves theact-consequentialist spirit. My aim in thispaper is to show that Carlson is wrong on bothcounts. His theory, contrary to his ownintentions, is not an act-consequentialisttheory. By building on a theory formulated byHolly Smith, I will show that the simple ideacan be upheld. The new theory I will proposehas all the merits of Carlson's theory withoutsharing its demerits.

Journal of Applied Philosophy, 2018

Philip Pettit has been one of the pioneering figures in the contemporary development of consequentialism toward an approach to ethical theory more adequate to our understanding of ourselves and of our lives together. He has shown how consequentialism has resources for contending with many of the most serious criticisms that have been levelled against it. Two fundamental elements of this development make an appearance in ‘Three Mistakes’. The first element is broadening the base of intrinsic goods in terms of which consequentialism makes its fundamental evaluations of acts and outcomes. At the outset of ‘Three Mistakes’, Pettit urges that consequentialists should go beyond the hedonic concerns of Benthamite utilitarianism to include among fundamental intrinsic goods friendship, promise-keeping, truth-telling, and the kind of respect for others shown when we impose upon ourselves limits on how we are willing to treat them. So sensible is this recommendation, that pluralism about intri...

Moral Philosophy and Politics, 2024

As an indirect ethical theory, rule consequentialism first evaluates moral codes in terms of how good the consequences of their general adoption are and then individual actions in terms of whether or not the optimific code authorises them. There are three well-known and powerful objections to rule consequentialism's indirect structure: the ideal world objection, the rule worship objection, and the incoherence objection. These objections are all based on cases in which following the optimific code has suboptimal consequences in the real world. After outlining the traditional objections and the cases used to support them, this paper first constructs a new hybrid version of consequentialism that combines elements of both act and rule consequentialism. It then argues that this novel view has sufficient resources for responding to the previous traditional objections to pure rule consequentialism.

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 2007