Relation to others· Morals
Consequentialism
Axis: Criterion of right action — What makes an action morally good?
An action is good if it produces the best possible consequences, for instance the greatest happiness for the greatest number. What ultimately matters is neither intentions nor rules, but the actual effects of our choices on the world.
Movements 3
Utilitarianismexplicit
Since an action has no worth in itself, only its effect on the world can make it good or bad: all that morally counts is the well-being it creates or destroys. From this ground springs consequentialism, which dismisses together the pure intention of and the excellence of character of ethics: reduces evaluation to a single measure, the act's tendency to augment or diminish the happiness of the parties concerned, against any rule or tradition claiming an authority independent of outcomes.
Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation · Mill, Utilitarianism
Show inferred positions (2)
Epicureanisminferable
Epicurean ethics weighs actions by their balance of pleasure and pain: one may choose a pain when it yields a greater pleasure, this hedonistic consequentialist calculus being the ultimate criterion. Yet , held to be the greatest good and the source of all the virtues, also gives this morality a strong cast of practical virtue, hence a split between consequentialism and virtue ethics.
Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus, 129-132 · Epicurus, Principal Doctrines, V
Pragmatisminferable
Pragmatism holds morality to be experimental: no fixed end or a priori law, but an intelligence that, in situation, evaluates conduct by its effects on experience and growth. Dewey joins to this the formation of dispositions and habits (a share of virtue) and the concern for social consequences. The right is decided in the testing, like a hypothesis to be verified.
Dewey, Theory of the Moral Life · Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy
Philosophers 5
Benthamexplicit
A morality, for Bentham, is worth nothing unless it supplies a public, demonstrable criterion rather than the disguised echo of a personal taste. The rival principles fail this test: the principle of asceticism condemns pleasure for no reason, and the principle of sympathy and antipathy sets up moral sentiment as a rule without answering for it, often masking a bare I approve or I disapprove. Only an action's tendency to augment or diminish happiness yields an external, checkable measure of right and wrong; any approval that does not reduce to it is mere caprice dressed up as a principle. Hence a thoroughgoing consequentialism: no act is good or bad in itself, independently of its outcomes.
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. I-II
Millexplicit
Mill seeks to ground morality on a fact rather than an undemonstrable intuition: the only proof that a thing is desirable, he argues, is that people actually desire it, and what everyone ultimately desires is happiness. Thence the as the sole criterion of the right, and the consequentialism he opposes to moral intuitionism and to alike: he charges Kant with being unable, in practice, to rule out a universalisable maxim except by invoking the desirability of its consequences, thus smuggling back the very utility he claimed to dismiss.
Utilitarianism (1863), ch. 2 (the greatest happiness doctrine) · Utilitarianism, ch. 1 (critique of the Kantian a priori)
Machiavelliexplicit
Machiavelli judges action not by principle but by effect: where there is no judge to appeal to, one looks to the end, and the means that keep the state will be held honorable. The prince must therefore learn to be able not to be good, not from a taste for evil, but because politics, the sphere of necessity, obeys a logic of its own, severed from private morality. The residue of "virtue" that remains is not moral: it is , efficacy and not goodness.
The Prince, chs. XV and XVIII · Discourses on Livy, I.9
Show inferred positions (2)
Epicurusinferable
The criterion of action is its contribution to pleasure understood as freedom from disturbance: one must weigh by reckoning (the calculus of pleasures and pains) the good and ill each choice brings. This consequentialist, hedonist structure nonetheless grants a place to prudence () as the cardinal virtue, hence a share of virtue ethics: one cannot live pleasantly without living prudently, honourably and justly.
Letter to Menoeceus, 129-132 (the calculus of pleasures; prudence, the source of the virtues) · Principal Doctrines, V (living pleasantly, prudently, honourably and justly)
Lucretiusinferable
The criterion of action remains that of Epicurus: the contribution to pleasure understood as freedom from disturbance, measured by the reckoning of the good and ill each choice brings. Lucretius scarcely theorizes ethics for its own sake, but the whole of his poetic morality aims at this outcome, ataraxia, and makes of prudence enlightened by knowledge of nature the virtue that leads to it. The structure is hedonist and consequentialist, with a place for practical wisdom.
On the Nature of Things, II, 7-19 (the true good: a body free of pain, a mind free of fear)
Argument
- An action changes the world only through its effects: the good and harm actually produced, the suffering spared or inflicted, the lives saved or lost.
- Whatever else one invokes is worth something only in view of that: we praise a good intention because it aims at the good, we follow a rule because it usually produces good results. Remove every beneficial effect, and pure intention or the observed rule relieve no one.
- There remains, then, in the last resort, a single criterion that reduces to no other: the amount of good and harm produced. To judge an action by anything else is to prefer a principle to the real beings it affects.
Therefore So the right action is the one that produces the best consequences, for instance the greatest happiness for the greatest number: effects, not intentions or rules, are the ultimate measure.
See the pageObjectionAttacks the position Thought experiment
- Compare two cases with an identical balance. In the first, one diverts the trolley by a switch; in the second, one can stop it only by pushing a man off a footbridge onto the track. Each time: one life lost, five saved.
- For the consequentialist, the two cases are equal, same balance so same verdict. Yet almost everyone judges that one may divert, but may not push.
- This difference of judgment cannot come from the consequences, which are identical: it lies in the way the good is produced, using a man as a mere means being not the same as causing his death as a side effect.
Therefore So consequences are not the whole of the right: the way of getting there counts too. An act can remain forbidden, when it treats a person as a pure instrument, even as it maximizes the good.
See the page- PrescriptiveMoral Thought experimentThe consequences or the forbidden act
Should an act be judged by its consequences alone, even if that means sacrificing one to save five, or do some acts stay forbidden whatever the cost?
an act - PrescriptiveMoral Thought experimentSaving a loved one rather than a stranger
We save the one we love without hesitating; but is what makes that act good a calculation, a rule that permits it, good character, or the bond itself, which no morality should require us to justify?
an act for a loved one - PrescriptiveMoralAre there absolutely forbidden acts?
Do some acts, such as lying or letting an innocent die, stay forbidden even when they would avert a disaster, or does everything give way before the scale of the consequences?
the act - PrescriptiveMoralThe part luck plays
We judge the reckless driver who ran over a child more harshly than the equally reckless one who happened to meet none: does the moral worth of an act depend on results we do not control?
the act - PrescriptiveMoralRivals or facets
Consequences, duty, virtue, care: are these rival theories of which only one can be true, or the facets of a single morality that nothing compels us to unify?
the moral criterion - PrescriptiveMoralA morality too demanding?
If only the greatest good counts, morality seems to demand sacrificing everything for others without limit: can it really ask that, or must it leave room for our own lives?
the moral demand