Consequentialism's double-edged Sword
Utilitas 22 (3):258-271 (2010)
Abstract
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 nonconsequentialist 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.Author's Profile
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2013
DOI
10.1017/s095382081000018x
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Citations of this work
What matters and how it matters: A choice-theoretic representation of moral theories.Franz Dietrich & Christian List - 2017 - Philosophical Review 126 (4):421-479.
Consequentializing and its consequences.S. Schroeder - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (6):1475-1497.
Consequentialism and the Standard Story of Action.Paul Hurley - 2018 - The Journal of Ethics 22 (1):25-44.
Exiting The Consequentialist Circle: Two Senses of Bringing It About.Paul Edward Hurley - 2019 - Analytic Philosophy 60 (2):130-163.
References found in this work
Act-Utilitarianism: Account of Right-Making Characteristics or Decision-Making Procedure?R. Eugene Bales - 1971 - American Philosophical Quarterly 8 (3):257 - 265.
Consequentializing moral theories.Douglas W. Portmore - 2007 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 88 (1):39–73.