Consequentialize This

Ethics 121 (4):749-771 (2011)
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Abstract

To 'consequentialise' is to take a putatively non-consequentialist moral theory and show that it is actually just another form of consequentialism. Some have speculated that every moral theory can be consequentialised. If this were so, then consequentialism would be empty; it would have no substantive content. As I argue here, however, this is not so. Beginning with the core consequentialist commitment to 'maximising the good', I formulate a precise definition of consequentialism and demonstrate that, given this definition, several sorts of moral theory resist consequentialisation. My strategy is to decompose consequentialism into three conditions, which I call 'agent neutrality', 'no moral dilemmas', and 'dominance', and then to exhibit some moral theories which violate each of these.

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Campbell Brown
London School of Economics

Citations of this work

Consequentialism.Walter Sinnott-Armstrong - 2019 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Epistemic Teleology and the Separateness of Propositions.Selim Berker - 2013 - Philosophical Review 122 (3):337-393.
Consequentializing.Douglas W. Portmore - forthcoming - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Accuracy and Evidence.Richard Pettigrew - 2013 - Dialectica 67 (4):579-596.

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References found in this work

Attitudes de dicto and de se.David Lewis - 1979 - Philosophical Review 88 (4):513-543.
Alienation, consequentialism, and the demands of morality.Peter Railton - 1984 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 13 (2):134-171.
How to define theoretical terms.David Lewis - 1970 - Journal of Philosophy 67 (13):427-446.
.Peter Railton - 1985 - Rowman & Littlefield.

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