Consequentialism is for making decisions

[sniffnoy]

There's an argument I've seen a number of times on the internet about the failings of consequentialism as a moral system. (Often this is phrased in terms of utilitarianism, since the term "utilitarianism" is better known than the more general term "consequentialism", but this is pretty clearly about consequentialism in general.) The argument goes roughly like so: Consequentialism tells us that the thing to do is the thing with the best results. But, this is a ridiculously high standard, that nobody can actually live up to. Thus, consequentialism tells us that everybody is bad, and we should all condemn everybody and all feel guilty. (There are a number of variants.)

This argument is based on a conflation. It assumes an idea of morality that answers not only, what should you do, but also, what should we condemn, what should we punish, what should one feel guilty about, and other similar questions, with the answer to the latter questions being the complement of the answers to the first. (And yes you can add wrinkles like supererogatory acts and such, but that's not particularly relevant to the argument so I'll ignore it.) But things don't have to work that way -- and consequentialism doesn't.

Consequentialism is for answering one question -- what to do. Consequentialism is for making decisions. It is not about what should be punished. It is not about what you should feel guilty about. It is about what you should do.

Of course, since all these other questions are also decisions, consequentialism can be used to answer them as well. However, one must answer them as decisions, as one would answer any other decision question; and the answer will not be the same as if you make the conflation above. What should we punish? Whatever it would yield the best result to punish. Not, whichever acts failed to yield the best result and are therefore "bad".

Indeed consequentialism doesn't even have a notion of "good" and "bad" acts, only better ones and worse ones. But that's another matter, so I won't discuss that here, although it does also serve to illustrate how it's just using a different framework than many of its critics are using and implicitly assume in their arguments.

Point is, this conflation is out there; and if you haven't noticed it before, maybe now you will now that I've pointed it out.

Comments

[joshuazelinsky]

"Indeed consequentialism doesn't even have a notion of "good" and "bad" acts, only better ones and worse ones. But that's another matter"

Is this true for all versions of consequentialism. This seems to be more true of utilitarianism than general consequentialism.

[sniffnoy]

Hm, that's true. One could consider consequentialisms that don't work like that. I don't really see any reason to, but you could. Normally though if someone talks about a consequentialism I assume they mean at least, like, a preference ordering over consequences. (Although dividing things into just "good" and "bad" is, I suppose, still a total preorder -- without introducing preferences over actions/gambles you won't get (decision-theoretic) utility -- but the flavor seems pretty differnet, I'd say...)

(Just in case it's not clear to any readers -- I've made this point over and over elsewhere on the internet but not, I think, here -- note that there is nothing particularly utilitarian about decision-theoretic utility functions, that's just a rationality constraint on consequentialism. It's not utilitarianism until you start involving E-utilities or aggregating utilities.)