CONSEQUENTIALISM

THE BEGINNINGS
 Consequentialism was made popular in
the 1700s and 1800s by Jeremy Bentham.
 He lived at a time of great political and
social change, and he wanted to create a
moral theory that treated people equally
without depending on religion.
 Bentham’s theory is that the right action
in any situation is the one that leads to
“THE GREATEST GOOD FOR THE
GREATEST NUMBER”.
 PLEASURE AND PAIN
Bentham believed that only pleasure is good in
itself, and only pain is bad in itself.
 Allhuman beings are ultimately motivated to
pursue pleasure and to avoid pain.
 But we cannot put our own pleasure above
those of other people – we must treat
everyone equally and impartially.
 So, to decide what to do we should weigh up
the total amounts of pleasure and pain that
could result from our actions.
 WHAT IS
CONSEQUENTIALISM?
 Consequentialism is the view that it is the
consequences (effects) of an action that make the
action good or bad.
 Both short- and long-term consequences count.
 No actions are good or bad in themselves. It is the
effect of what we do on other people that
matters.
 For traditional forms of consequentialism, the
goodness or badness of an action is measured in
terms of how much pleasure and pain it causes in
the people affected.
 WHAT IS
CONSEQUENTIALISM?
 Consequentialism is the idea that “the ends
justify the means”.
 If the end result (consequences) of an action
are good, this justifies the means (action)
that we took to achieve the end.
 In any decision, we should take each of our
options and weigh up the good and bad
effects that will result.
 The right action is the one that leads to the
best balance of good over bad consequences.
 CONSEQUENTIALISM IS
BASED ON TWO PRINCIPLES:

 Whether an act is right or wrong depends

only on the results of that act

 The more good consequences an act

produces, the better or more right that act
 STRENGTHS

 Consequentialism tries to bring about good

effects for people – it is concerned with
improving human lives.
 It does not try to derive its authority from
some other source (e.g. from God/the law) –
instead, it lets us decide whether a law is
itself good or bad!
 You can be a consequentialist as long as you
care about people.
 WEAKNESSES

 Consequentialism has both practical and

philosophical problems:
Future consequences are difficult to predict
 It's hard to predict the future consequences of an actin almost every
case the most we can do is predict the probability of certain
consequences following an act

 and since my behavior is based on my assessment of the

consequences, should the rightness or wrongness of an act be assessed
on what I thought was going to happen or what actually happened?
 WEAKNESSES
 Measuring and comparing the 'goodness' of consequences is
very difficult
 people don't agree on what should be assessed in calculating
good consequences
is it happiness, pleasure, satisfaction of desire or something
else?
 It's hard to measure and compare the 'goodness' of those
consequences
how, for example, do you measure happiness?
how do you compare a large quantity of happiness that lasts
for a few minutes with a gentle satisfaction that lasts for years?
how do you measure any 'subjective' quality?
 WEAKNESSES
 Choosing different time periods may produce different
consequences
 for example, using cheap energy may produce good short-
term economic results, but in the long-term it may produce
bad results for global climate
 It is easy to bias in favor of particular groups
 choosing different groups of people may produce different
consequences
 an act that produces a good result for group X may at the same
time produce a bad result for group Y, or for society in general
 so the ethical choices people make are likely to be different
according to which group they use for their moral calculations
 WEAKNESSES
 It ignores things we regard as ethically relevant
results-based ethics is only interested in the
consequences of an act
the intentions of the person doing the act are irrelevant
so an act with good results done by someone who
intended harm is as good as if it was done by
someone who intended to do good
the past actions of the person doing the act are
irrelevant
the character of the person doing the act is irrelevant

And these are things that many think are relevant to

ethical judgements.
 WEAKNESSES
 It can be inconsistent with human rights
Consider this situation:
A billionaire needs an organ transplant. He says that if he is
given the next suitable organ he will fund 1000 hip-replacements
a year for 10 years. Giving him the next available organ means
Mr. X, who was top of the list, will die - but it also means that
thousands of people will be very happy with their new hips.
 Consequentialism might be used to argue that Mr. X's human
rights (and his and his family's happiness) should be ignored,
in order to increase the overall amount of human well-being.
 TYPES OF CONSEQUENTIALISM
 Utilitarianism: creating the most good for the
most people
 Egoism: creating the most good for one’s self 
 Altruism:  we act completely selflessly and
only in the interest of others. 
Categorical Imperative
 KANTIAN ETHICS
 German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-
1804) was an opponent of utilitarianism.
 For Kantians, there are two questions that we
must ask ourselves whenever we decide to act:
 (i) Can I rationally will that everyone act as I
propose to act?
  If the answer is no, then we must not perform
the action.
 KANTIAN ETHICS
(ii)  Whether my action respect the goals of
human beings rather than merely using them
for my own purposes?  
If the answer is no, then we must not perform
the action.  
Kant’s theory is an example of a deontological
moral theory–according to these theories, the
rightness or wrongness of actions does not
depend on their consequences but on whether
the action is right or wrong under a series of
rules.
 CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE
 Kant believed that there was a supreme
principle of morality, and he referred to it
as The Categorical Imperative.  
 The CI determines what our moral duties
are.
  What is an imperative? 

An imperative is a command. 
"Pay your taxes!" is an imperative, as are
"Stop kicking me!" and "Don't kill animals!
 CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE
 Categorical Imperatives: 
unconditional commands
  E.g. “Don’t cheat on your taxes.”  Even if you
want to cheat and doing so would serve
your interests, you may not cheat.

Morality must be based on the categorical

imperative because morality is such that you
are commanded by it, and is such that you
cannot opt out of it or claim that it does not
apply to you.
 FORMULATION OF
CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVES
1.The Universalizability:
 Act according to the maxim that you would
wish all other rational people to follow, as if it
were a universal law

2.The Formula of Humanity

 Realize the humanity in others and don’t use
them as a means to achieve your goals.
 CASE
A man was locked alone in a room for one night, and he brought
nothing with him except a bottle of water. The man has had nothing
to drink all day and is very thirsty.
We can call this man, "Thirsty Man."
A hypothetical imperative might be that "a thirsty man must
drink water if he wants to stop being thirsty." If Thirsty Man lived by a
maxim based on this hypothetical imperative, it might be "If I can, I
will drink water whenever I am thirsty."
In this example, Thirsty Man is not making any obvious moral
choice.
A few minutes later a second man is brought into the room. Both
men are told that they will be in the room all night, and that no one
else will be back to see them until morning.

Thirsty Man has not yet opened the water bottle. The new man has
not had anything to drink for many days. If he is not given water
soon he will die. We can call this second man, "Dying Man."
Thirsty Man now has a decision to make, will he share
the water or drink it himself?
Thirsty Man does not live by the maxim of "I will drink
water when I am thirsty," because that maxim fails the
test of being universally fulfilling the categorical
imperative.
Thirsty Man believes that the categorical imperative is
the Golden Rule. To be an ethical person, Thirsty Man
believes he must at all times treat others the way he
would want them to treat him. From the categorical
imperative of the Golden Rule, Thirsty Man has adopted
a maxim of "I will give anything I can to anyone I meet, if
that person needs what I have much more than I need it."