Kantianism, Consequentialism, and Deterrence

Many philosophers argue that it is morally objectionable in principle to punish people in order to deter others from committing crimes. Such punishment is said to treat the offender simply as a means to benefit others. This Kantian argument rests on a certain reading of the Formula of Humanity. However, the central concept in that formula is not “treating a person simply as a means” but rather “treating a person as an end.” This conclusion speaks against the moral principle that Victor Tadros uses to support his nonconsequentialist theory of punishment. Furthermore, a plausible way of interpreting the injunction to treat people as ends—Rawls’s original position—does not rule out seeking deterrence. Therefore, Kantianism and consequentialism do not differ in a fundamental way on the permissibility of deterrence. But Rawls’s Kantianism sets an implausible ceiling on the severity of punishments, and consequentialism does not.

Commonsense Consequentialism, Moral Rationalism, and Options

Commonsense consequentialism seeks to embrace the importance of commonsense features of the moral landscape (options and constraints, in particular), while retaining the consequentialist focus on the outcomes of our actions. In focusing on options, this chapter argues that a central presumption for commonsense consequentialist moral theories—in defending both the “commonsense” and the “consequentialist” aspects of such a view—is moral rationalism, or the principle according to which one is normatively required to conform to one’s moral requirements. However, we have reason to believe that moral rationalism is probably false, and hence attempts to “consequentialize” commonsense moral theories face a substantial justificatory challenge.

Consequentialism and Coordination

Sometimes, whether your X-ing will have good consequences depends on whether you or someone else is going to Y. This chapter argues that in such instances, what’s important in determining whether you should X is whether you have control over Y’s occurrence, and that in the relevant sense of ‘control’, agents have just as much control over whether they will nonvoluntarily form various attitudes (e.g., beliefs, desires, and intentions) as they do over whether they will voluntarily perform various actions. Therefore, consequentialists should be concerned not only with an agent’s voluntary actions but also with her nonvoluntary attitudes. Indeed, consequentialists should hold that whether an agent ought to perform some future act depends on whether she would perform that future act if she were now to form and perform all the acts and attitudes that she is required to form and perform.

World-Centered Value

This chapter deals with the concept “world-centered value” which seems to be a natural extension of some concepts that already exist in ethical theory and also seems useful for understanding some confusing ideas (about the representation of prohibition dilemmas or about apparent failures of transitivity of “better than”) in the work of other philosophers. The chapter explains that concept and employs it to explicate the confusing ideas. If the concept makes sense, and if it can be useful in understanding the ideas by placing them in the consequentialist framework, then world-centered value earns its keep and should find a place next to agent-centered and time-centered value in the ethical theorist’s toolbox.

Consequentialism, Rationality, and Kantian Respect

Arguments for moral consequentialism often appeal to an alleged structural similarity between consequentialist reasoning in ethics and rational decision-making in everyday life. Ordinary rational decision-making is seen as a paradigmatic case of goal-oriented, teleological decision-making, since it allegedly aims at maximizing the goal of preference satisfaction. This chapter describes and discusses a neglected type of preference change, “predictable preference accommodation.” This phenomenon leads to a number of critical cases in which the rationality of a particular choice does not depend on features of the outcome of the chosen act. On the basis of these cases, it is argued that consequentialists cannot point to everyday decision-making as an uncontroversial example of consequentialist reasoning. On the contrary, it is suggested that an adequate account of rationality in prudential choice may need a Kantian notion of respect.

New Wave Consequentialism

Consequentialism is a focal point of discussion in moral philosophy, although it is unclear what, exactly, consequentialism is. Taking seriously the idea that “consequentialism” is a term of art in moral theorizing that has been shaped in response to objections against utilitarianism, this chapter retraces the debate on consequentialism in section 1.1. It shows that (a) a trend to design consequentialist theories at increasingly higher levels of abstraction has triggered an emerging new wave consequentialism which is extremely flexible and characteristically associated with a “resort to abstraction” and a “turn to reasons”; and that (b) the concept of consequentialism itself has become increasingly general by incremental conceptual emancipations from certain characteristic marks. Section 1.2 explains the structure of the volume, summarizes the essays, and outlines the relation between them. By identifying emerging topics for further exploration, section 1.3 provides a brief outlook on the prospects of new wave consequentialism.

The Restrictions of Consequentialism

Deontic restrictions are widely believed to pose a challenge for consequentialist views of moral rightness. Consequentialists who want to make sense of such restrictions typically appeal to agent-relative value. This chapter argues that it is not our understanding of value, but rather our understanding of outcomes, that is crucial for a consequentialist account of restrictions. First, it is possible to consequentialize restrictions without appealing to agent-relative value, namely by employing an agent-centered conception of outcomes. Second, even consequentialist accounts of restrictions that rely on ascriptions of agent-relative value fail to be satisfying unless they are complemented by an agent-centered conception of outcomes. The chapter concludes by offering some thoughts on how such a conception is best understood and on how it can be supported by further considerations.

The Good of Consequentialized Deontology

This chapter critically discusses the hitherto most radical and ambitious proposal for accommodating consequentialism with our commonsense moral intuitions. According to this proposal, which has been most forcefully developed by Douglas Portmore, it is possible to consequentialize every plausible deontological moral theory, i.e., to translate a deontological theory into a consequentialist theory that yields exactly the same moral verdicts as the original deontological theory. The hoped for result of this move is a moral theory that (i) retains the compelling idea of consequentialism, (ii) has no counterintuitive moral implications, and (iii) avoids the paradox of deontology. After describing some of the details of the consequentializing procedure the chapter mounts several objections that lead to the conclusion that the consequentializing project cannot achieve any of its goals.

Multidimensional Consequentialism and Population Ethics

The main claim of this chapter is that multidimensional consequentialists have reason to reject some of the key premises of Parfit’s Mere Addition Paradox as well as Arrhenius’s sixth impossibility theorem. The latter is the most general and far-reaching impossibility theorem in the literature on population ethics. The chapter shows that multidimensional consequentialists can reasonably maintain that the mere addition of people who have lives worth living is not always entirely right. To add what Parfit calls “extra people” is right with respect to one moral aspect (the size of the population) but wrong with respect to another (the average quality of life).

Fittingness Objections to Consequentialism

New work in the foundations of ethics—extending the fitting attitudes analysis of value to yield a broader notion of normative fittingness as a fundamental normative concept—provides us with the resources to clarify and renew the force of traditional character-based objections to consequentialism. According to these revamped fittingness objections, a moral theory (e.g., consequentialism) has implications for what will qualify as fitting attitudes, and as a morally fitting psychology more broadly. If a theory’s implications regarding the fittingness facts are implausible, then this can be taken to cast doubt on the truth of the theory. After clarifying the general structure of fittingness objections, and clearly establishing how they can make character-based concerns relevant to our assessment of the truth of a moral theory like consequentialism, the chapter surveys some paradigmatic fittingness objections, showing how consequentialism can be defended against them.