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Summary Consequentialism
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ConsequentialismConsequentialism: do as much good as you can.
If you have a choice between 2 options and the first is less good than the second
choosing the first can’t possibly be right.
Act as morally right just because they maximize the amount of goodness in the world.
We justify our actions by pointing to the good they did, and criticize actions by
showing that they caused unnecessary harm
Different views about the morality of the death penalty (doodstraf):
1. Consequentialist: people insist that such punishment is justified only if it
improves our lives
We look to the future. What is better for the future.
2. Second group: The focus is on whether certain people deserve to be killed for
the crimes they have committed.
Asks not about what the future will hold but rather about what the past
requires us.
Consequentialists are those who encourage (aanmoedingen) us not to cry over spilt
milk. They direct our attention to the future, not to the past. They ask us to look at the
consequences of our actions.
The Nature of Consequentialism
Structure
Consequentialism says that an action is morally required just because it produces the
best overall results (is optimific (optimaal)).
There are five steps to determine if an act is optimific:
1. Identify what is intrinsically good - valuable in and of itself, and worth of having
for its own sake. Familiar candidates include happiness, autonomy, knowledge
and virtue
2. Identify what is intrinsically bad. Examples might include physical pain, mental
anguish, sadistic impulses, and the betrayal of innocents.
3. Determine all of your options. Which actions are open to you at the moment?
4. For each option, determine the value of its results. How much of what is
intrinsically good will each action bring about? How much of what is
intrinsically bad?
5. Pick the action that yields the greatest net balance of good over bad. That is
the optimific choice. That is your moral duty. Doing anything else is immoral.
Consequentialism is a family of theories united by their agreement that results are
what matter in ethics
1. Ethical egoism: consequences for just me
2. Group consequentialism: consequences for just my group
3. Utilitarianism: consequences for everyone.
According to utilitarianism an action is morally required just because it does
more to improve overall well-being than any other action you could have done
in the circumstances.
, According to utilitarianisms, acts are right just because they maximize the
overall amount of well-being in the world.
Maximizing Goodness
Mill is one of the greatest utilitarian’s, he summarized the utilitarian outlook by saying
that it required us to create the greatest good for the greatest number
Mill was a hedonist. He believed that only happiness was intrinsically valuable and
only misery (ellende) was intrinsically bad.
If we combine utilitarianism and hedonism, we get this ultimate moral principle:
produce the greatest overall balance of happiness over misery.
There are 2 misunderstandings of this principle:
1. In choosing among acts that benefit people we must benefit the greatest
number of people.
Mill reject this because the benefit of the majority may be very small, whereas
the benefit of the minority may be very large.
2. We must always choose that action that creates the greatest amount of
happiness.
Mill reject this. Imagine that the first plan creates more happiness than the
second. But the first plan may also create a huge amount of misery while the
second plan creates very little.
The correct interpretation: utilitarians tells us to do what bring about the best
overall situation by choosing the act that creates the greatest net balance of
happiness over unhappiness.
Moral Knowledge
Utilitarian’s make the rightness of an action depend on all of its results, not matter
how long after the action they occur.
If the rightness of an action depends on all of its results and these haven’t yet
occurred then how can we know whether an action is the right one to do?
The utilitarians are split on how best to answer this question:
1. The first group thinks that the morality of actions depends on their actual
results --> this is the standard view
2. The second group think that it depends instead on their expected results
There are cases where we do not know that is right or wrong. Many utilitarians
explain this by saying that since we do not have a crystal ball we cannot perfectly
predict the future. Therefore, we can never be certain in advance that our actions are
morally right.
Other utilitarian’s don’t agree on this. They want to make moral knowledge easier to
get. We should be able to know the morality of our acts when we perform them,
rather than having to wait until all of the results are in. For this group the solution to
this worry is to make the rightness of actions depend not on their actual results but
on their expected results
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