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Course: Wireless Philosophy > Unit 3
Lesson 1: Ethics- Ethics: The Problem of Evil
- Ethics: Problem of Evil, Part 1
- Ethics: Problem of Evil, Part 2
- Ethics: Problem of Evil, Part 3
- Ethics: God and Morality, Part 1
- Ethics: God and Morality, Part 2
- Ethics: Moral Status
- Ethics: Killing Animals for Food
- Ethics: Hedonism and The Experience Machine
- Ethics: Consequentialism
- Ethics: Utilitarianism, Part 1
- Ethics: Utilitarianism, Part 2
- Ethics: Utilitarianism, Part 3
- Ethics: The Problem of Moral Luck
- Ethics: The Nonidentity Problem
- Ethics: The Nonidentity Problem, Part 2
- Ethics: Symmetry Argument Against the Badness of Death
- Ethics: Promising Against the Evidence #1
- Ethics: Promising Against the Evidence #2
- Ethics: Know Thyself #1 (The Examined Life)
- Ethics: Consent #1 (What is Consent?)
- Ethics: Consent #2 (Consent and Rights)
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Ethics: Consequentialism
In this video, Julia Driver (Washington University in St. Louis) introduces us to the ethical theory of consequentialism. Help us caption & translate this video!
Speaker: Dr. Julia Driver, Professor of Philosophy, Washington University at St. Louis.
Speaker: Dr. Julia Driver, Professor of Philosophy, Washington University at St. Louis.
Want to join the conversation?
- If consequences are not what matter then what could matter more? Whatever you choose to say, would only matter more because it would have better consequences. To say that something would be more valuable is to say that it would improve the situation, resulting only in better consequences. If you say that you have something that would be better despite lacking improvements to consequence, then why should it be valued? Take the example used in the video about breaking a promise: to maximize positive moral consequences would almost always result in keeping the promise regardless of it's relation to a shallow hedonism. The consequences of breaking the promise would not be "slightly better" because the negative moral implications that come with breaking it constitute moral and consequential wrongs. Consequentialism may seem demanding but what in life is easy to do well? We do not live perfect lives; even in situations where we know we could do better, we choose not to. This says nothing about the validity of the concept, rather it speaks about the nature of humans.(9 votes)
- It is so strange to me that whenever consequentialism is criticized, it is always by in fact using consequentialism itself, but simply changing what counts as good, and/or what consequences we take into account.
In the promise example, it is still one of the consequences, that a) the promise is broken, b) moral code to which we agreed is broken c) the friend is displeased. Why only include a subset of consequences and insist it is exhaustive?
Can you give an example, however abstract, where you actually show something other than consequences matters? I think it is impossible by definition, but I'd really like to see a more elaborate argument to the contrary.(5 votes) - At around4:00, J. Driver argues that maximizing forms of consequentialism such as utilitarianism imply that not producing enough pleasure for society is ethically wrong. However, why is there even a notion of ethically good or ethically bad in the first place? Under a maximizing form of consequentialism, why can't we simply compare ethical actions relative to each other and call some ethical actions better than others? This gives us much more choice in how we view our actions.
I think it is desirable to have ethics that say that giving money to charity while buying food is better than simply buying food, but I don't agree with ethics that have a moral obligation to do the ethically better thing. Moral obligation such as ethical good and ethical bad often ignores the situation of people such as their mental health, willpower, perspective, etc.. The good/bad dichotomy helps us to understand actions better, but when one becomes philosophically rigorous and intellectually genuine, such a binary opposition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_opposition) really breaks down. At the very least, I think it can easily be seen that maximizing forms of consequentialism does not require or imply any moral obligation, even if such moral obligation is desirable in some cases.(2 votes)- Consequentialism is a theory about action rightness according to which an action is right if and only if it maximizes valuable states of affairs from the most impartial perspective, so some actions will have the property of being right and others wrong. What you are suggesting: That we should have a theory which allows us to produce an ordering relation on our actions without classifying actions as right or wrong may be defensible or not but such a theory isn't consequentialism, because it isn't a theory of action rightness. Besides, I take it that most philosophers would regard with dispensing with moral obligation altogether a pretty radical and implausible move (surely, Hitler's actions are impermissible if anything is) and if we allow that some moral obligations exist then we have to have a theory explaining them and consequentialism is one such theory.(4 votes)
- I can see that consequentalism would be quite demanding, but is not the bigger problem that you would have to think through every action in your life to all it's possible consequences, in an extremely complex system?
Also some actions may bring more pleasure in the short term but be more harmfull in he long run, like some company's who maximize profits at all cost and end up destroying the company over the long run because what they do is not sustainable.
I do like to play chess but if i would have to think through every action in my life to all possible outcomes i would hardly do anything, and that would probably be worse than doing something that is not producing the maximum good but still is producing good results.
So does anyone think we can actually know what would produce the maximum good in any action without getting totaly paralised by the thinking through of the consequences?(2 votes) - If you promised Steve you'll steal the medicine from Martha, the fact it is a promise or the fact anyone's feelings would be hurt seems almost completely morally irrelevant. It's still very wrong to keep that promise. Why is keeping a promise assumed to be good here?(1 vote)
- So is a consequentialist theory
- a theory assessing morality in terms of the overall outcomes of an action
- the same as virtue theory
- a theory assessing morality in terms of duty(1 vote) - How exactly does the idea of Karma relate to consequentialism?(1 vote)
- The example also begs the question, "What if you believe saving more people is LESS good?" that is to say we have a population problem, so saving 5 people instead of one creates more people who have more children and then there are more starving and sick and dying and more carbon emissions causing global warming than ever? When we had 1 billion people on the planet it wasn't enough we had to have 6 billion and now even more but we are choking out all other life and even our own lives now are in jeopardy but having more people is so important we just gotta have billions more.
Okay that was a little rant but seriously, we don't need more people, more people = BAD. So the point I'm making though is in other examples as well you are going to have different ideas about what is GOOD or even if GOOD is a real thing that exists or do we just make it up?(1 vote)
Video transcript
(intro music) Hi! My name's Julia Driver,
and I teach in the philosophy department at
Washington University in St. Louis. Today, I'm going to introduce you
to the theory of consequentialism. Consequentialism is a type of
normative ethical theory. Such theories provide criteria
for moral evaluation, and may also recommend rules
or decision procedures for people to follow in acting morally. Consequentialism, in its most general
form, holds that the moral quality of an action is completely determined
by its consequences. There are variations on this theme. For example, we might be evaluating
character traits instead of actions, or we might be evaluating actions
in terms of the consequences of adopting a set of rules that
prescribe those actions. The common thread, however, is that moral quality is a function of
consequences and nothing else. Traditionally, consequentialist theories
of moral evaluation have two parts. One part is an account of what is good, and the other part, an account of how to
approach the good, which underlies the attribution of deontic properties to the
action, such as the property of being right. For example, the most well-known
version of consequentialism is hedonistic act utilitarianism, which holds
that the right action is the action that maximizes pleasure, the action that has
the best overall consequences in terms of the production of pleasure. Here, the theory of the good is hedonism,
which is the view that pleasure is the one intrinsic good, and the approach to
pleasure is to maximize it, or to produce as much of it as possible. Suppose a doctor, Martha, has a dose of
medicine that is just enough to save the life of one person, Steve. To save Steve, she would need to
use the entire dose of medicine. However, there are five other people
who need much smaller doses in order to be saved. She could instead divide the
medicine into five smaller doses and save them instead of Steve. The utilitarian would view the
right action as the action with the best consequences, and so Martha
should use the medicine to save five rather than just one. The guiding idea is that
the point of morality is to make the world a better place. Consequentialism is contrasted with
theories of moral evaluation that either hold that consequences
are not relevant in determining the moral quality of one's actions;
or that consequences are only partly relevant, and that other considerations
matter in determinations of moral quality. Very few believe that consequences
are not at all relevant. However, there are very many moral
theorists who believe consequentialism is incorrect because it reduces
the moral quality of an action to the goodness of its consequences. For example, I have moral reason to keep
a promise, even if the promise does not promote the good. The reason is simply that
I made the promise. If I break a promise, I have
done something wrong, even if the consequences of breaking
the promise are slightly better than the consequences
of keeping the promise. Maximizing forms of consequentialism
are thought to be overly demanding. If the right action for me to perform is the one among the options open to me that
produces the most good, and if failure to produce the
most good is therefore wrong, then many of our ordinary
actions are wrong. For example, if I buy a bagel every
morning for breakfast, rather than make my own toast at home, then I
am spending money on a bagel that I could be spending to do something else
that, morally speaking, is better. I could save my bagel money
and send it to Oxfam, and use the money to save people's lives. And this is true for very
many of the purchases that people in affluent countries make. Thus, maximizing forms
of consequentialism, such as utilitarianism, seem to
be morally very demanding. To avoid this problem, some
consequentialists hold that the right action need not
maximize the good. Instead, the right action is the action
that produces enough good. This is called "satisficing
consequentialism." However, this approach seems odd, since
maximizing seems to be rationally required by the observation that more good
is surely better than less good. Subtitles by the Amara.org community