The fact that we do not know the overall consequences of our actions makes room for further versions of consequentialism. Friendly Consequentialism: Of all the things a person might do at any given moment, the morally right action is the one that has the best consequences for that person and her friends. If you do not want to praise my conduct, you might prefer a new version of consequentialism: Reasonable Consequentialism: An action is morally right if and only if it has the best reasonably expected consequences. Further, it is important that people be free to make decisions for themselves, even poor decisions, because that is the only way that people develop strength of character and because constant experimentation is the only way humanity learns about the various possibilities of life. When we are thinking about morality, that is usually because we are puzzled about some hard question. This controversial line of thought is not only an objection to the above argument for consequentialism, it is also an argument against consequentialism. But whatever a person does, she does in order to produce some sort of benefit. Therefore, your intentional action of tossing did not make you win. Then you will have had twice as much happiness as I had. A different kind of reply to the objection is to adjust consequentialism itself so that it is no longer impartial. Hence the fact that consequentialism disagrees with common sense about odd cases is no disproof of consequentialism. If every action is taken to produce some benefit, that shows only that the benefit is part of the reason for every action, not that the benefit is the whole reason. But this reason for favoring consequentialism seems confused. For example, the setting of a speed limit will help some people and hurt others, but there is no way to know in advance who the people will be, what projects will be helped or hindered, and how the further effects of all these things will play out over the centuries. Or suppose you are on average twice as happy as I am, and we live equally long. The great work on which he had been engaged for many years, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, was published in 1789. Putting ethics at the centre of everyday life. For example, a Consequentialist who thinks the kind of consequence that matters is happiness is unlikely to think that one persons happiness is more important than anothers (so long as the amounts of happiness in question are the same). The usual Consequentialist view is that a 50% chance of a certain good outcome is half as good as that good outcome itself, and a 10% chance is one tenth as good. Here are two simple examples of such theories: Egoistic Consequentialism: Of all the things a person might do at any given moment, the morally right action is the one that has the best consequences for that person. (From 1 and 3), The right action is the one that objectively ought to happen. For another example, one important implication of an action I take may be that I (already) am a certain kind of person. But since many people regard it as not quite in the spirit of consequentialism and many of the issues surrounding Rule Consequentialism are unique to it, we shall say little more about it here. Jeremy Bentham was born in Houndsditch, London in 1748. But that way of thinking about life is, one might think, inhuman and immoral. Deontology and the Agent: A Reply to Bennett. v. t. e. Jeremy Bentham ( / bnm /; 4 February 1747/8 O.S. Perhaps the most standard precise version of consequentialism is Plain Consequentialism. Jeremy Bentham is important for being one of the founders of modern utilitarianism, a main current of philosophical ethics since the late 18th century, for his defense of psychological and ethical hedonism, and for his far-reaching proposals for the reform of Parliament, the legal code, the judiciary, and the prison system in Britain. Publisher description: An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation is a book by philosopher Jeremy Bentham "originally printed in 1780, and first published in 1789." Is it better to give my money to charity or spend it studying medicine so I can save lives? Oughts, Options, and Actualism., Mulgan, Tim, Two Conceptions of Benevolence., Murphy, Liam B. Jeremy Bentham, best known for his advocacy of utilitarianism Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. Eventually you decide to toss the coin, you win, and I bake the cake. The oppressor, obviously, retaliates with ever more repressive measures to crush the minority by force. But on many issues there is a broad range of solid agreement about what is morally obvious, at least in societies that have long permitted open discussion by all. Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like Which type of ethics is sometimes referred to as a consequentialism?, Jeremy Bentham focuses on which of the following in determining the rightness or wrongness of action?, Which scheme or method did Jeremy Bentham invent to measure pleasure and pain, to assist in making proper decisions? (From 5 and 6), 8. 3 says that she has another desirethe desire that all her other desires be fulfilled as much as possible. Central Concepts 4. But Expectable Consequentialism has a strange implication. Singer, Marcus G. Actual Consequence Utilitarianism., Singer, Peter. Four Concepts of Mohist Ethical Theory Four interrelated concepts are at the heart of Mohist ethical theory: morality, benefit, benevolence, and care. Consequentialism says you should do this; but moral common sense says that you should not. Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, wrote the following in his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation: "When a man attempts to combat the principle of utility, it is with reasons drawn, without his being aware of it, from that very principle itself." Now, rationality and objectivity are impartial; they do not favor one person over another. The oppressors force is relentless to crush the minority rebellion, and the repressive measures adopted in retaliation is specifically for the purpose of forcing the minority to subjugation under its iron fist and crush the rebellion to render the minority weak in the future. See Foot (1985); Scanlon (1998). There is disagreement about how consequentialism can best be formulated as a precise theory, and so there are various versions of consequentialism. Another important point about consequences is that the actual consequences of an action, beyond the action itself, need not be actual outcomes. Since Double Consequentialism does not imply that you should estimate the consequences of your everyday actions, it seems to escape the objection that consequentialism requires inhuman and immoral thinking. She cares only about whether it actually succeededeven though, as explained above, the success, when it happens, is arguably not a consequence of your intentional action at all. Persons, Character, and Morality, in Bernard Williams. Decision-Theoretic Consequentialism and the Nearest and Dearest Objection., Jackson, Frank, and Pargetter, Robert. That insight is that morally appropriate behavior will not harm others, but instead increase happiness or 'utility.' For example, suppose that many years ago, before anyone knew that gold is made of atoms or that it is the element with atomic number 79, Jack and Jill were hiking in unclaimed land and came upon some heavy shiny lumps. One worry about this shorter argument is that Premise 2 may be false. For example, it sounds a bit odd to say that when you call someone a good person, you are calling her a desirable person. In this sense, it is the consequences of an action that determine whether or not it is morally permissible, rather that the motives behind the action. So far as you can tell, heads and tails are equally likely, even if objectively there is a 100% chance of heads. Much of his childhood was spent happily at his two grandmothers country houses. The more happiness there is, the better. In his Rationale of Judicial Evidence (1827) he described the methods that a court should use to get at the truth as quickly as possible; and in the Essay on Political Tactics (1791) he described what he considered the most effective forms of debate for a legislative assemblyan account based largely on the procedure of the House of Commons. The volume also features an insightful . Hence if you have such a secret, your further projects will be more poorly chosen, designed, and carried out. Unhappiness can be thought of as negative happiness, so that the total happiness we two have in this third case is zero. Now, this objection does not directly apply to Plain Consequentialism or Plain Scalar Consequentialism, for these theories do not say that we should think about consequences. Should it count if it is based on a factual mistake or if it is malicious? It is also a very good essay on sovereignty. Moral common sense is shaped by and for the demands of ordinary moral life and so common sense may not be very reliable in odd cases. For another example, suppose I am sick and you are a doctor. Utilitarianism-any person is governed by two masters, that is, pain and pleasure. For example, perhaps we can do the most good overall if we forcibly stop people from wasting their time and energy on pointless or harmful things like driving SUVs, watching television, eating meat, following sports, and so on. And since your dollar can usually do more good for desperate refugees than for yourself or your friends, consequentialism seems to hold that you ought to spend most of your dollars on strangers. (From 1), It can never be right to choose something worse over something better, when nothing else is at stake. Consider the following argument for consequentialism. Expectable Consequentialism says that an action can be right even if I do not think reasonably about it at all, so long as it is the action I would have estimated to have the best consequences if I had done a reasonable job of making an estimate. (Premise), It can never be right to choose a worse whole set of consequences over a better. Another worry is that it is unclear exactly how 7 is supposed to imply 8. See Mill (1859). A different kind of reply to the objection is to propose that one of the ultimate standards for goodness of consequences should be equality. If the evil group was so cleverly deceptive that even the Better Business Bureaus web site said they do good work fighting malaria, then you may think the damage done by my money was not my fault. Suppose you are on average just as happy as I am, but you live twice as long. 1. The services of tienne Dumont in recasting as well as translating the works of Bentham were still more important. This, his first essay in economics, presented in the form of a series of letters from Russia, shows him as a disciple of the economist Adam Smith but one who argued that Smith did not follow the logic of his own principles. Learn more. As a critic of institutions Bentham was admirable. Presumably the stronger desires are to count for more. Reasonable Consequentialism may be too simple. Disappointed, after his return to England in 1788, in the hope of making a political career, he settled down to discovering the principles of legislation. If we try to produce the greatest total benefit, then we are loving all people in the sense that we are being impartial, caring for people in general, promoting each persons well-being insofar as that is at stake in our actions and insofar as our helping one does not hurt others more. As a moralist and psychologist, Bentham has similarly appeared to be inadequate; his arguments, though sometimes elaborate, rest too often on insufficient and ambiguous premises. For one thing, each of us is in a better position to understand her own affairs than you are and more naturally and reliably concerned than you are to make sure that her own affairs are carried out well. Forming many romantic attachments hardly seems like the path toward perfection; nor perhaps does the widespread spiritual exercise of focusing on wishing people well without actually helping them. See Le Guin (1973); Rawls (1999); Harsanyi (1977). (From 1 and 2), An action is good insofar as its consequences include the satisfaction of desire. Jeremy Bentham (17481832) was the father of utilitarianism, a moral theory that argues that actions should be judged right or wrong to the extent they increase or decrease human well-being or 'utility'. The fame of his writings spread widely and rapidly. (i) The objectively right action is the action with the best consequences, and (ii) the morally right action is any action with the best reasonably expected consequences. See Campbell and Sowden (1985). The right or wrong of an action is the intrinsic spirit of an action. Now in one sense your prescription was wrong, but in another sense it was morally right. Such a conception is egalitarian in the sense that it counts every bit of your happiness as being just as important as the same sized bits of my happiness. Now, suppose that you do not happen to know whether this machine always yields heads or always tails. Second, more concretely, to be moral is to care about people. But he remembers that stealing is generally regarded as wrong. The most famous version of this theory is utilitarianism. Updated: 10/31/2021 . Let us take the example of a minority being oppressed in a country. (1827), was put in its finished state by John Stuart Mill and the Book of Fallacies (1824) by Peregrine Bingham. So far as he can reasonably guess, that scheme would have the best overall consequences. Now, to find the goodness of the consequences of an action, simply take the total amount of happiness in those consequences. See Jackson (1991). It also means more than that people are motivated by their own desires. Hooker, Brad; Mason, Elinor; and Miller, Dale E. Jackson, Frank. In 1785 Bentham started, by way of Italy and Constantinople, on a visit to his brother, Samuel Bentham, an engineer in the Russian armed forces; and it was in Russia that he wrote his Defence of Usury (published 1787). But if quantity of life were the only kind of good result, then a long happy life would be no better than a long unhappy life. He was one of the first atheist philosophers and wanted to devise a morality that would reflect an atheistic understanding of what it meant to be human. Both this effigy and the head are preserved in University College London. (From 7, crossing for you out of both sides of the equation), An action is good insofar as its overall consequences contain happiness. In consequentialism, the consequences of an action include (a) the action itself, and (b) everything the action causes. A volume of his Constitutional Code, which he did not live to complete, was published in 1830. For example, if you think that the whole point of morality is (a) to spread happiness and relieve suffering, or (b) to create as much freedom as possible in the world, or (c) to promote the survival of our species, then you accept consequentialism. In 1823 he helped to found the Westminster Review to spread the principles of philosophical radicalism. As far back as 1809 he had written a tractA Catechism of Parliamentary Reform, which was, however, not published until 1817advocating annual elections; equal electoral districts; a wide suffrage, including woman suffrage; and the secret ballot. This makes life nicer and helps people be concerned for each other rather than fearful of each other, and they will therefore do more good for each other. If happiness was the experience of pleasure without pain, the most ethical actions were ones that caused the most possible happiness and the least possible pain. 1223 Words5 Pages. He thereafter studied law at Lincolns Inn and was called to the bar in 1769, though he immediately abandoned a legal career, preferring instead to be a legal reformer. These are good because of the further goods that they tend to produce. We have here one of the fundamental disagreements in the history of moral philosophy, with deontologists, such as Kant, arguing that there are rules that should be followed even when the consequences are very bad, and some things that we must never do even if the consequences are disastrous, and consequentialists, such as Jeremy Bentham and John. One could phrase consequentialism in general terms as, for example, the theory that there is some feature of consequences of actions such that the right action is the one whose consequences have that feature to the greatest degree.. See Sidgwick (1907). That is, if As consequences are a little better than Bs, then A is morally a little better than B; and if As consequences are much better than Cs, then A is morally much better than C. This theory implies that the actions with the best consequences are morally best, but it does not say that if you do the second-best you are doing something morally wrong.
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