Consequentialism's Double-Edged Sword

Consequentialism's Double-Edged Sword

View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by St Andrews Research Repository Consequentialism’s Double-Edged Sword BENJAMIN SACHS Program in Environmental Studies and Center for Bioethics, New York University Recent work on consequentialism has revealed it to be more flexible than previously thought. Consequentialists have shown how their theory can accommodate certain features with which it has long been considered incompatible, such as agent-centered constraints. This flexibility is usually thought to work in consequentialism’s favor. I want to cast doubt on this assumption. I begin by putting forward the strongest statement of consequentialism’s flexibility: the claim that, whatever set of intuitions the best non- consequentialist theory accommodates, we can construct a consequentialist theory that can do the same while still retaining whatever is compelling about consequentialism. I argue that if this is true then most likely the non-consequentialist theory with which we started will turn out to have that same compelling feature. So while this extreme flexibility, if indeed consequentialism has it (a question I leave to the side), makes consequentialism more appealing, it makes non-consequentialism more appealing too. I. INTRODUCTION Consequentialism has long been subject to criticism for failing to do as good a job as non-consequentialism of accommodating widespread intuitions about cases. Recent moral philosophers such as Hare, Sen, Scheffler, Railton, Brink and Broome have aimed to show that conse- quentialism has greater flexibility, or ability to accommodate these in- tuitions, than it has been credited for. But if we accept these widespread intuitions, why not just adopt non-consequentialism? The thought must be that we give up something important if we abandon consequen- tialism in favor of non-consequentialism. What I aim to show here is that consequentialists have not yet shown us how it can be true both (1) that consequentialism can deliver the intuitively plausible case- specific verdicts that non-consequentialism can deliver and (2) that we give up something important when we move from consequentialism to non-consequentialism. In fact, the very premises likely to be used in arguments for the first claim can be used to cast doubt on the second. Before explaining why this is the case, I first need to make claims (1) and (2) more precise. In claim (1), the term ‘the intuitively plausible case-specific verdicts that non-consequentialism can deliver’ should be understood as designating all such verdicts. Or, more precisely it should be understood as designating the most intuitively plausible consistent set of case-specific verdicts (since there might be contradictory verdicts each of which we find intuitively plausible) that non-consequentialism can deliver, where ‘case-specific verdicts’ are © Cambridge University Press 2010 Utilitas Vol. 22, No. 3, September 2010 doi:10.1017/S095382081000018X Consequentialism’s Double-Edged Sword 259 claims about the moral permissibility of specific actions. Thus, claim (1) is the claim that consequentialism can deliver the most intuitively plausible set of claims about the moral permissibility of specific actions that non-consequentialism can deliver. This claim, which I will label ‘Consequentializability’, has been argued for by several authors.1 Claim (2) holds that we give up something important when we move from consequentialism to non-consequentialism. We need to be specific, however, about which versions of consequentialism and non-consequentialism we are concerned about. It seems that in considering whether to abandon consequentialism in favor of non-consequentialism, consequentialists should care specifically about whether the best version of consequentialism is better than the best version of non-consequentialism. Therefore, claim (2) should be construed as asserting that we give up something important in moving from the best version of consequentialism to the best version of non-consequentialism. The remaining ambiguity stems from the presence of the term ‘give up something important’ in claim (2). What is it about the best version of consequentialism that consequentialists would not want to give up, but might have to give up in the move to the best version of non-consequentialism? Broadly speaking, there are two possibilities. First, there might be some compelling idea with which the best version of consequentialism is compatible and the best version of non-consequentialism is incompatible. Call this ‘something important’ the Compelling Idea. Second, the best version of consequentialism might embody some desirable quality, such as simplicity, power or coherence, that the best version of non-consequentialism lacks. Call this ‘something important’ the Desirable Quality. It is evident that the consequentialists who hold fast to claims (1) and (2) believe that (2) is true on the first interpretation, where the move from the best version of consequentialism to the best version of non-consequentialism requires giving up some Compelling Idea. When consequentialists argue for claim (1), they make ideas the issue; they implicitly accept the notion that normative ethical theories should be judged according to what ideas they can accommodate, and they proceed to argue that consequentialism does a better job of accommodating a certain group 1 James Dreier, ‘Structures of Normative Theories’, Monist 76 (1993), pp. 19–30; Jennie Louise, ‘Relativity of Value and the Consequentialist Umbrella’, Philosophical Quarterly 54 (2004), pp. 518–36; Michael Smith, ‘Neutral and Relative Value after Moore’, Ethics 113 (2003), pp. 576–98; Douglas Portmore, ‘Consequentializing Moral Theories’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 88 (2007), pp. 39–73; Graham Oddie and Peter Milne, ‘Act and Value: Expectation and Representability of Moral Theories’, Theoria 57.1–2 (1991), pp. 42–56. 260 Benjamin Sachs of ideas – intuitively plausible case-specific verdicts – than we might have thought. Given these two clarifications, we should now interpret claim (2) as saying that the best version of consequentialism is, and the best version of non-consequentialism is not, compatible with the Compelling Idea. This claim, which I will label ‘Superiority’, is reasonably imputable to Sen, Scheffler, and others, and has actually been argued for by Douglas Portmore.2 II. WHAT DO WE GET OUT OF THE TRUTH OF CONSEQUENTIALIZABILITY? My goal is to demonstrate that the arguments likely to be used in support of Consequentializability can be used against Superiority. In fact, on the assumption that Consequentializability is true, I will make a prima-facie case for the denial of Superiority, which I will call ‘Parity’: Parity: If the best version of consequentialism is compatible with the Compelling Idea, then the best version of non-consequentialism is compatible with the Compelling Idea.3 My argument will be lengthy and detailed, but the basic idea behind it is quite simple: since consequentialism tells us that the moral permissi- bility of an action depends on the value of the resulting state of affairs, what case-specific verdicts a version of consequentialism can deliver depends on what value theory it includes. If Consequentializability is true, that means that the consequentialist can construct a value theory such that her version of consequentialism delivers the most plausible set of case-specific verdicts that can be delivered in a non- consequentialist framework. And if the resulting version of consequen- tialism is compatible with the Compelling Idea, then a fortiori the value theory is too. Now take the version of non-consequentialism that delivers that same set of case-specific verdicts and call it N. In order to make N compatible with the Compelling Idea, thereby demonstrating the truth of Parity, we simply need to incorporate that same value theory into N. In other words, once the consequentialist shows how we can have the Compelling Idea and the most plausible set of case-specific verdicts in a single package, there is no more reason to think that the best version of non-consequentialism – the 2 Douglas Portmore, ‘Consequentializing Moral Theories’, and ‘Consequentializing’, Philosophy Compass 4 (2009), pp. 329–47. 3 The truth-functional form of Superiority is P & ∼Q (the best version of consequentialism is compatible with the Compelling Idea and the best version of non- consequentialism is not). P & ∼Q is equivalent to ∼(P Q). The denial of ∼(P Q) is P Q, which is the truth-functional form of Parity (if the best version of consequentialism is compatible with the Compelling Idea then the best version of non-consequentialism is too). Consequentialism’s Double-Edged Sword 261 version that delivers that set – will be incompatible with the Compelling Idea. All the non-consequentialist has to do in order to make her theory compatible with the Compelling Idea is accept the fruits of the consequentialist’s labor. This section will be dedicated to laying out this argument in a more formal manner. We begin, again, by assuming that Consequentializability is true. To establish the truth of Consequentializability, one must take the most plausible set of case-specific verdicts that non-consequentialism can deliver and put forward a value theory that shows that these verdicts can be delivered in a consequentialist framework. Since my opponent and I agree, at least for the sake of argument, that this can be done, it is not necessary to illustrate fully how it can be done.4 Nevertheless, a bit of illustration

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