Monday, March 16, 2009

CONSEQUENTIALISM

CONSEQUENTIALISM

CONSEQUENTIALISM (IN GENERAL) vs. DEONTOLOGY
  • CONSEQUENTIALISM: The moral status of a given action (i.e. whether this act is right or wrong, obligatory or forbidden, etc.) depends solely on the consequences of this action.
  • DEONTOLOGY: The moral status of a given action depends solely on something other than the consequences of this action.

CLASSICAL UTILITARIANISM

MILL: "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. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure. To give a clear view of the moral standard set up by the theory, much more requires to be said; in particular, what things it includes in the ideas of pain and pleasure; and to what extent this is left an open question. But these supplementary explanations do not affect the theory of life on which this theory of morality is grounded-namely, that pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other scheme) are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain." (J.S. Mill in Utilitarianism)
UTILITARIANISM (U): An act, A, is morally right if and only if A maximizes social utility (i.e. the utility of all) (there must be no alternative the agent can do that has higher utility).

THE VALUE THEORY ASSUMED BY CLASSIC UTILITARIANS:

Mill: "Now, such a theory of life excites in many minds, and among them in some of the most estimable in feeling and purpose, inveterate dislike. To suppose that life has (as they express it) no higher end than pleasure-no better and nobler object of desire and pursuit-they designate as utterly mean and grovelling; as a doctrine worthy only of swine, to whom the followers of Epicurus were, at a very early period, contemptuously likened; and modern holders of the doctrine are occasionally made the subject of equally polite comparisons by its German, French, and English assailants.

When thus attacked, the Epicureans have always answered, that it is not they, but their accusers, who represent human nature in a degrading light; since the accusation supposes human beings to be capable of no pleasures except those of which swine are capable. If this supposition were true, the charge could not be gainsaid, but would then be no longer an imputation; for if the sources of pleasure were precisely the same to human beings and to swine, the rule of life which is good enough for the one would be good enough for the other. The comparison of the Epicurean life to that of beasts is felt as degrading, precisely because a beast's pleasures do not satisfy a human being's conceptions of happiness. Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites, and when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which does not include their gratification. I do not, indeed, consider the Epicureans to have been by any means faultless in drawing out their scheme of consequences from the utilitarian principle. To do this in any sufficient manner, many Stoic, as well as Christian elements require to be included. But there is no known Epicurean theory of life which does not assign to the pleasures of the intellect, of the feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments, a much higher value as pleasures than to those of mere sensation. It must be admitted, however, that utilitarian writers in general have placed the superiority of mental over bodily pleasures chiefly in the greater permanency, safety, uncostliness, & c., of the former, that is, in their circumstantial advantages rather than in their intrinsic nature. And on all these points utilitarians have fully proved their case; but they might have taken the other, and, as it may be called, higher ground, with entire consistency. It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognize the fact, that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others. It would be absurd that while, in estimating all other things, quality is considered as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasures should be supposed to depend on quantity alone. "

  • Quantitative hedonism (Bentham): Only the amount of pleasure matters.
  • Qualitative hedonism (Mill): The quality of pleasure also matters.

If we combine a general Principle of Utility with Mill's account of intrinsic value, we have:

MILL'S UTILITARIANISM (U): An act, A, is morally right if and only if A maximizes social utility; that is, A promotes at least as much of a balance of happiness (pleasure) over unhappiness (pain) as any alternative to A.

FEATURES (PROPERTIES) of CLASSICAL UTILITARIANISM

  • Universal: No one is excluded from possibly being included in utility calculations.
  • Egalitarian: Jeremy Bentham incorporate the essential component of moral equality by means of the formula, "Each to count for one and none for more than one." Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900) expressed the same idea in the following statement: "The good of any individual is of more importance, from the point of view (if I may say so) of the Universe, than the good of any other. The main idea is that everyone is weighted the same in the utility calculations. Mary's happiness, for example, does not count any more or less than anyone else's.
  • Consequential: The utility of an action is determined by its consequences. Whether the action is right or wrong depends on the utility of this action in comparison with the utility of alternatives.
  • Maximal: In each case, that action is right which maximizes utility. That is, utilitarians postulate that we always must aim at the best, nothing less is morally satisfactory.
  • Hedonic: The sole intrinsic good is pleasure. The sole intrinsic evil is pain.
  • Act-Evaluative (direct): Our utility-calculations only consider the consequences of actions (as opposed to, e.g., the utility of adopting a certain system of rules)

UTILITARIANISM MUST BE CONTRASTED WITH OTHER VERSIONS OF CONSEQUENTIALISM

Ayn Rand: "The ethics of altruism has created the image of the brute . . . in order to make men accept two inhuman tenets: (a) that any concern with one's own interests is evil, regardless of what these interests might be, and (b) that the brute's activities are in fact to one's own interest (which altruism enjoins man to renounce for the sake of his neighbors) . . .
Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one's own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value-and so long as that beneficiary is anybody other than oneself, anything goes . . . altruism permits no concept of a self-respecting.
The Objectivist ethics (of egoism) holds that the actor must always be the beneficiary of his action and that man must act for his own rational self-interest."
  • ETHICAL EGOISM (EE): An act, A, is morally right if and only if A is in the best interest of the agent (the person who performs this act).
  • RADICAL ETHICAL ALTRUISM (REA): An act, A, is morally right if and only if this act is in the best interest of people other than the agent.

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