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About consequentialism

Consequentialism: results-based ethics

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy gives a plain and simple definition of consequentialism:

Consequentialism is based on two principles:

• Whether an act is right or wrong depends only on the results of that act
• The more good consequences an act produces, the better or more right that act

It gives us this guidance when faced with a moral dilemma:

• A person should choose the action that maximises good consequences

And it gives this general guidance on how to live:

• People should live so as to maximise good consequences

Different forms of consequentialism differ over what the good thing is that should be maximised.

• Utilitarianism states that people should maximise human welfare or well-being (which they used to call 'utility' - hence the name).
• Hedonism states that people should maximise human pleasure.
• Other forms of consequentialism take a more subtle approach; for example stating that people should maximise the satisfaction of their fully informed and rational preferences.

In practice people don't assess the ethical consequences of every single act (that's called 'act consequentialism') because they don't have the time.

Instead they use ethical rules that are derived from considering the general consequences of particular types of acts. That is called 'rule consequentialism'.

• So, for example, according to rule consequentialism we consider lying to be wrong because we know that in general lying produces bad consequences.

Results-based ethics produces this important conclusion for ethical thinking:

• No type of act is inherently wrong - not even murder - it depends on the result of the act

This far-fetched example may make things clearer:

• Suppose that by killing X, an entirely innocent person, we can save the lives of 10 other innocent people
• A consequentialist would say that killing X is justified because it would result in only 1 person dying, rather than 10 people dying
• A non-consequentialist would say it is inherently wrong to murder people and refuse to kill X, even though not killing X leads to the death of 9 more people than killing X

Utilitarianism

Evaluating each decision would take too long. Photo: Liz Fagoli ©

The classic form of results-based ethics is called utilitarianism.

This says that the ethically right choice in a given situation is the one that produces the most happiness and the least unhappiness for the largest number of people.

The appeal of results-based ethics

Results-based ethics plays a very large part in everyday life because it is simple and appeals to common sense:

• It seems sensible to base ethics on producing happiness and reducing unhappiness
• It seems sensible to base ethics on the consequences of what we do, since we usually take decisions about what to do by considering what results will be produced
• It seems easy to understand and to be based on common sense

Act consequentialism

Act consequentialism

Act consequentialism looks at every single moral choice anew. It teaches:

• A particular action is morally good only if it produces more overall good than any alternative action.

Good points of act consequentialism

A flexible system

• Act consequentialism is flexible and can take account of any set of circumstances, however exceptional.

Bad points of act consequentialism

Impractical for real life use

• while it sounds attractive in theory, it’s a very difficult system to apply to real life moral decisions because:
  • every moral decision is a completely separate case that must be fully evaluated
  • individuals must research the consequences of their acts before they can make an ethically sound choice
  • doing such research is often impracticable, and too costly
  • the time taken by such research leads to slow decision-making which may itself have bad consequences, and the bad consequences of delay may outweigh the good consequences of making a perfect decision
• but where a very serious moral choice has to be made, or in unusual circumstances, individuals may well think hard about the consequences of particular moral choices in this way

Bad for society

• some people argue that if everyone adopted act consequentialism it would have bad consequences for society in general
• this is because it would be difficult to predict the moral decisions that other people would make, and this would lead to great uncertainty about how they would behave
• some philosophers also think that it would lead to a collapse of mutual trust in society, as many would fear that prejudice or bias towards family or other groups would more strongly influence moral decisions than if people used general moral rules based on consequentialism
• fortunately the impracticality of act consequentialism as a general moral process means we don't have to worry much about this

Rule consequentialism

Rule consequentialism

Rule consequentialism bases moral rules on their consequences. This removes many of the problems of act consequentialism.

Rule consequentialism teaches:

• Whether acts are good or bad depends on moral rules
• Moral rules are chosen solely on the basis of their consequences

So when an individual has a moral choice to make they can ask themselves if there's an appropriate rule to apply and then apply it.

The rules that should be adopted are the rules that would produce the best results if they were adopted by most people.

Philosophers express this with greater precision:

• an act is right if and only if it results from the internalisation of a set of rules that would maximize good if the overwhelming majority of agents internalised this set of rules

And here's another version:

Good points of rule consequentialism

Practical and efficient

• Rule consequentialism gets round the practical problems of act consequentialism because the hard work has been done in deriving the rules; individuals don't generally have to carry out difficult research before they can take action
• And because individuals can shortcut their moral decision-making they are much more likely to make decisions in a quick and timely way

Bad points of rule consequentialism

Less flexible

• Because rule consequentialism uses general rules it doesn't always produce the best result in individual cases
• However, those in favour of it argue that it produces more good results considered over a long period than act consequentialism
• One way of dealing with this problem - and one that people use all the time in everyday life - is to apply basic rules, together with a set of variations that cover a wide range of situations. These variations are themselves derived in the same way as the general rules

Other forms of consequentialism

Negative Consequentialism

Negative consequentialism is the inverse of ordinary consequentialism. Good actions are the ones that produce the least harm.

• A person should choose the act that does the least amount of harm to the greatest number of people.

Against consequentialism

Against consequentialism

Consequentialism has both practical and philosophical problems:

Future consequences are difficult to predict

• it's hard to predict the future consequences of an act
  • in almost every case the most we can do is predict the probability of certain consequences following an act
  • and since my behaviour is based on my assessment of the consequences, should the rightness or wrongness of an act be assessed on what I thought was going to happen or what actually happened?

Measuring and comparing the 'goodness' of consequences is very difficult

• people don't agree on what should be assessed in calculating good consequences
  • is it happiness, pleasure, satisfaction of desire or something else?
• It's hard to measure and compare the 'goodness' of those consequences
  • how, for example, do you measure happiness?
  • how do you compare a large quantity of happiness that lasts for a few minutes with a gentle satisfaction that lasts for years?
  • how do you measure any 'subjective' quality?
• Choosing different time periods may produce different consequences
  • for example, using cheap energy may produce good short-term economic results, but in the long-term it may produce bad results for global climate

It is easy to bias in favour of particular groups

• choosing different groups of people may produce different consequences
  • an act that produces a good result for group X may at the same time produce a bad result for group Y, or for society in general
  • so the ethical choices people make are likely to be different according to which group they use for their moral calculations
• the most common solution to this problem is to look at the consequences for a large group such as 'society in general'
• alternatively, ethicists can try to look at things from the standpoint of an 'ideal', fully informed and totally neutral observer

It ignores things we regard as ethically relevant

• results-based ethics is only interested in the consequences of an act
• the intentions of the person doing the act are irrelevant
  • so an act with good results done by someone who intended harm is as good as if it was done by someone who intended to do good
• the past actions of the person doing the act are irrelevant
• the character of the person doing the act is irrelevant
• the fairness of the consequences are not directly relevant

And these are things that many think are relevant to ethical judgements.

However, in support of consequentialism it might be argued that many of the things listed above do influence the good or bad consequences of an act, particularly when formulating ethical rules, and so they become incorporated in consequentialist ethical thinking; but only through the back door, not directly.

It doesn't take account of the 'fairness' of the result

We cannot predict every outcome of an event ©

Simple forms of consequentialism say that the best action is the one that produces the largest total of happiness.

This ignores the way in which that happiness is shared out and so would seem to approve of acts that make most people happy, and a few people very unhappy, or that make a few people ecstatically happy and leave the majority at best neutral.

It also detracts from the value of individuals and their own interests and projects, other than when those are in line with the interests of the group.

It can be inconsistent with human rights

Consider this situation:

A billionaire needs an organ transplant. He says that if he is given the next suitable organ he will fund 1000 hip-replacements a year for 10 years. Giving him the next available organ means Mr X, who was top of the list, will die - but it also means that thousands of people will be very happy with their new hips.

Consequentialism might be used to argue that Mr X's human rights (and his and his family's happiness) should be ignored, in order to increase the overall amount of human well-being.