Chap 2:

Consequentialist and Non-

Consequentialist Theories of Morality
 Lesson Outcomes
At the end of the lesson, you should be able to:

1. Describe and differentiate the consequentialist and non-consequentialist views of morality

2. Describe and analyze the consequentialist theories of egoism and utilitarianism
3. Describe and analyze the non-consequentialist theories of intuitionism, Divine Command
Theory, Kantian Ethics, and Ross’ Prima Facie Duties
 Discussion Question…
With the rising Covid cases in Malaysia and the worldwide lack of vaccines, should elderly and
persons with prior illness be given priority to receive the vaccine? Given that old people are
already close to the end of their lives and no longer contribute to the economy, shouldn’t vaccines
be prioritized to the younger people? After all, they have more to live. What do you think?
Two General Trajectory of Ethics

Consequentialist
Non-
Consequentialist
 Consequentialism vs Non-Conseqentialism
Ethics is usually divided into two major views:

1. Consequentialism – Concerned with consequences

2. Non-Consequentialism – Not concerned with consequences

 Consequentialism divides also into two major views

1. Ethical egoism – Act out of self interest.
2. Utilitarianism – Act for interest of all.
 Egoism

Psychological Ethical
 Psychological Egoism (Pe)
 Pe is not to be confused with Ethical egoism (Ee).
 Pe is a scientific, descriptive theory.
 Ee is a normative, prescriptive theory.
MEANING of Pe – People are predisposed / hardwired to be selfish

 Pe has both a strong version (sPe) and a weak version (wPe).

 Strong version: Always act out of self –interest.
 Weak version: Often, but not always, act out of self-interest.
 Problems with Psychological Egoism
Problems:
 Some use sPe as a basis for Ee.
 Redundancy: why tell people to do what they cannot help doing?

 Some use wPe as a basis for Ee:

 Is /ought fallacy: The way I often may act has little to do with how I should act.
 Ethical Egoism (Ee)
 Ee has three main forms:
1. Individual ethical egoism (iEe): Everyone ought to act in my self-interest.
2. Personal ethical egoism (pEe): I ought to act in my own self-interest.
3. Universal ethical egoism (uEe): Everyone should act in their own self-interest.

Problems with individual and personal egoism:

 Lack of general applicability
 Egoists may need to conceal their egoism out of self –interest
 Is egoism consistent?
 Egoists do not consider how their actions may affect others.
 Universal Ethical Egoism (uEe)
 Most common version of egoist theory: Everyone should act in their own self-interest.

Problems:
 Inconsistency
 What is meant by everyone?
 Difficulty in giving moral advice
 Blurring the moral and nonmoral use of “ought” and “should”
 Inconsistent with helping professions

Advantages of uEe
 Easier to determine self-interest
 Encourages individual freedom and responsibility

 UEe overall: Works plausibly when individuals are isolated. Conflicts arise when interests overlap. Communities are
now increasingly interconnected socially, politically, economically, etc., so egoism less plausible.
Ayn Rand – Rational
Ethical Egoism
 Ayn Rand (1905-1982) is the most prominent modern universal ethical egoist.
(Objectivism)  Argued that conflicts wouldn’t arise between individuals if they were
“rational.”

 Objectivism - proper life for rational beings is the pursuit of their happiness
and that altruism and self sacrifice are incompatible with rational morality

 Virtue of Selfishness – promotes freedom and life

 If existence on earth is your goal, you must choose your actions and
values by the standards of that which is proper to man for the purpose of
preserving, fulfilling and enjoying your life
 If you do not hold these values, then, for Rand, you’re advocating death
 Altruism – living your life in service of others is LIFE DENYING and
CANNOT BE HELD AS A STANDARD FOR MORAL BEHAVIOR
 “If man accepts the ethics of altruism… his first concern is not how to live
his life, but how to sacrifice it”
 Do we owe our love to those who don’t deserve love; and those who deserve
it, how much more love do we owe them?
 Problems with Egoism
 Can the proponents of ethical egoism coherently urge others to become ethical egoists?
(Since it’s not beneficial for you to tell people to be beneficial to themselves)
 If we seek to act for our own benefit, wouldn’t we want OTHER PEOPLE TO NOT
SERVE THEIR OWN BENEFITS?
 If I do not give food to others because food is scarce (and you need to survive),
wouldn’t you then logically WISH TO HAVE OTHER PEOPLE GIVE YOU FOOD
(since giving food to you will ensure your survival?)

 In situations where one’s desires conflict with the desires of others, ethical egoism implies
ethical prescriptions that are contradictory
 Example: If 2 people are interviewing for a job, and if everyone is an egoist, you
wouldn’t want the other person to get the job (since you want the job)
 Utilitarianism
 Utilitarianism = “utility” or usefulness. Morality is or ought to be useful
 Most prominent philosophers of utilitarianism were Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and John
Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
 

Two kinds of utilitarianism:

1. Act utilitarianism: Everyone should perform that act that will bring about the greatest good for
everyone.
2. Rule utilitarianism: Everyone should follow that rule that will bring about the greatest good
for everyone.
 Act Utilitarianism (AU)
 Perform that act that will bring about the most good for
everyone affected by that act.
 AUs believe that each situation is different. Each individual
must try to bring about the greatest amount of good
consequences for all involved in this situation at this time
 Associated with Jeremy Bentham
 
Criticisms of AU
 Difficulty of determining consequences for others.
 Impracticality of beginning anew: Are all acts and situations
completely different?
 Difficulty of educating young or uninitiated if there are no
rules or guidelines
 How to Measure Happiness
 In determining the quantity of happiness that might be produced by an action, Bentham proposes an
evaluation of the possible consequences by applying several values

 Five elements to calculate the Greatest Amount of Happiness

1. Pleasure minus pain – in any event, the experience of pleasure is better than pain
2. Intensity – the more intense the happiness caused by an action, the better
3. Duration – the longer lasting the happiness, the better
4. Fruitfulness - a happiness which will open up opportunities to experience future happiness is to be
preferred over a happiness which yields no such opportunities
5. Likelihood - in trying to predict which action will yield happiness for the greatest number, we must
factor in the likelihood of that consequence.

 “The quantity of pleasure being equal, pushpin is as good as poetry”

 Translation: Pleasure is pleasure, whether one is reading poetry or playing a mindless game
 Rule Utilitarianism (RU)
 RU emerges out of criticisms of AU as trapped in a “pleasure
machine”
 Rather than acts, RU believes that everyone should establish and
follow that rule that will bring about the greatest good for all
concerned
 Considers the consequences of people generally following the rule
presupposed by a particular action – more long-term thinking is
involved
 Human motives, beliefs, actions and situations are sufficiently similar
to justify setting up rules to generate the greatest good
 Mostly associated with John Stuart Mill

Criticisms of RU
 Difficulty of determining consequences for others.
 Are there any rules that are exceptionless?
 Problems with Utilitarianism
Cost- benefit analysis or end justifies the means
 Is the utility criterion understood as the “greatest good for the greatest number” always the right
thing to strive for?
 Are individuals “ends in themselves” such that the “cost-benefit” type of analysis treats
individuals merely as means?

 Although utilitarianism, unlike egoism, tries to consider others, it runs into difficulty
determining what would be good for others.
 In AU there are no rules as such. In RU, which rules cover all situations? Does the end always
justify the means?
 Can we discover all the consequences of our decisions in the present? This is especially difficult
for utilitarians because they are concerned with the effects of their decisions on others.
 Care Ethics
 Primarily consequentialist. Most prominent exponent is Carol
Gilligan (1936-) who stood against Kohlberg’s ethical theories. 
 Men and women are different when it comes to ethical decision
making.
 Men and women think differently but unequally when it comes to
morality (Kohlberg). For Kohlberg, women’s moral reasoning is
inferior.
 Gilligan women’s moral reasoning is different but equal with men’s.
 Different answers to moral dilemmas explained not by inferior moral
development by women but by tendency for men to focus on “justice”
and women on “care.”
 For Gilligan we need both justice and care.
 BUT… is it a woman’s “nature” to be caring?
 Non-Consequentalist Ethics

Non-Consequentialism

Rule Act

Divine Command Duty Intuitionism

 Non-Consequentialism
 Nonconsequentialist theories - consequences should not enter into our moral judgments
 Actions are to be judged right or good in accordance with other criteria (intuitions, divine
command, etc.).

 Act Non-consequentialist Theories (ANC).

 Only individual acts and situations count morally. Cannot generalize from rules or principles
since every situation is different. Appeal to “intuition” and “emotions”, NOT reason, to arrive at
moral conclusions.

 “If it feels good, do it.” “Do your own thing.”

 Criticisms of Act Non-consequentialism
1. If we all have different intuitions, then there is no way to resolve conflicts.
2. How do we know that our intuitions are good moral guides?
3. How can we know when we have sufficient evidence to support our intuitions?
4. How can our intuitions be good for all?
5. How do we justify our intuitions?
6. Are our momentary intuitions all we have to make moral decisions?

More generally:
 Are all acts completely unalike?
 Is one individual’s intuition sufficient?
 Intuitionism
In support:
 Immediate sense of right and wrong
 Humans had moral ideas before the existence of philosophers. These ideas were intuitions.
 Reasoning in morals is only used to confirm our intuitions.
 Reasoning on its own too often goes awry. Fall back on what “feels right.”

Arguments against:
 Intuitions are wild guesses
 No proof that we have innate moral sense
 Intuitions can’t be critiqued
 Absence of intuitions in some suggests either lack of morals or morals based on other grounds
 Rule Non-consequentialist Theories (RNC)
 There are or can be rules to guide our moral judgments
independently of their consequences. How these theories differ is in
terms of how they establish the rules to be followed. 

Divine Command
 Must follow the commands (rules) of an all good being (usually God)

Criticisms
 Lack of rational foundation
 Even if we could show that the rules were morally valid we could not
justify them in a satisfactory way. (What about atheists and
agnostics?)
 How do we interpret the rules correctly? Wide divergence of
interpretation amongst religious believers?
 The Euthyphro Problem
 Kantian Ethics

 Focuses on duty, rights, or moral obligation

 A person should exercise ‘“autonomy of the will,” and choose for
herself the moral principles that she will follow
 The trouble with divine command theories and utilitarianism
is that they are heteronomous: they enjoin someone (God) or
something else (the desire for pleasure) to decide the moral
principles that one will follow
 The Good Will
 The “will,” for Kant, is our ability to choose what we will do and the reasons on which we will act
 The Good Will is the only thing that is good without qualification 
 A person with a good will does what is right:
 Not because it will produce such and such consequences, or satisfy his/her
inclinations but because he/she believes it is his moral duty to do it.
 “Duty is the necessity of acting from respect for a law” and “a law is an objective principle valid for
every rational being and a principle on which everyone ought to act”
 The Good Will is motivated purely by reason, which is the only thing that humans can “will” (or control)
 To act out of a “good will” means to act out of a sense of moral obligation or “duty”
 All good moral acts must be grounded in the good will
 Categorical Imperatives (CI)
 Morality by Reasoning alone, not God according to:
 Logical consistency: won’t contradict itself
 Universalizability: apply to everything without exception.
 Kant thought that one could deduce moral absolutes, in accordance with the above, through the Categorical
Imperative.
 IMPERATIVES - Something that must be done
 “All imperatives command either hypothetically or categorically… if the action would be good simply as
a means to something else, then the imperative is hypothetical; but if the action is represented as good in
itself… then the imperative is categorical.”
 Categorical imperative - What I ought to do unconditionally
 All ethical behavior is a categorical imperative
 Duty rather than Inclination
 One should obey absolute rules out of a sense of duty not inclination. Someone who is only inclined to
be generous –rather than generous out of duty- is not fully moral.
 Two Formulations of the CI
1. Act only on that maxim that you can will as a universal law.
 If we can consistently will that everyone do some type of action, then that action will be moral
 If we can’t consistently will that everyone do some type of action, then that type of action is morally
wrong

2. Always treat humanity, whether your own person or that of another, never simply as a means but
always at the same time as an end
 Humans must never be exploited, manipulated, or merely used as a means to our idea of what is for
the general good
 You should respect other persons because all rational persons are equal

 If your actions pass these “tests,” that the action is “morally good”
 Kant’s Duty Ethics
1. Conflicting duties – how to choose?
2. Many questionable values can be universalized without contradiction or inconsistency.
3. Reversibility criterion (in relation to no. 2 above, Kant would “reverse” the question and ask
would you want it done to you?) may be implicitly consequentialist. I.e. would you want
someone to help you in need because the consequences are better than someone not helping you
when you need help?
4. Qualifying a rule versus making exceptions to it. One may object to exceptions to the rule but
qualifying the rule may still be consistent with CI.
Ex: Making promises and breaking them.
5. Duties versus inclinations. If duties and inclinations coincide, what is the difference morally?
Ex: What if you are not inclined to kill?
 Ross’s Prima Facie Duties
 Sir William David Ross (1877-1940) agreed with Kant’s RNC but not with the absolutism that Kant derived
from it.
 Although morality should not rest solely on consequences, it is necessary to consider consequences when
making moral choices.
Prima Facie Duties
 Prima facie duties literally are duties “at first glance.” They are those duties all human beings must obey unless
other considerations enter the picture.
 Such considerations may outweigh our otherwise prima facie duties. With this Ross thought Kant’s absolutism
and thereby conflicting duties could be avoided.
Criticisms
 Intuitionist: what criteria determine prima facie duties?
 When is one duty “stronger” than another?
 Application of the CI – Lying
APPLYING Kant’s 1st CI
 Lying requires the existence of a practice of truth-telling; otherwise, people would not believe you when you
utter false propositions
 If everybody lied, then there could be no practice of truth telling
 So there could be no lies
 THIS IS A CONTRADICTION
 Therefore, you can’t act according to the maxim “lie when it is to your advantage”

Applying Kant’s 2nd CI

 Lying is a an act of deception
 Lying can be successful only if we use other people’s ignorance
 You are manipulating someone
 We are treating them only as a means to our end
 Therefore, we are not treating humans as “ends in themselves”
 General Criticisms of Nonconsequentialist Theories
1. Why follow rules if consequences are bad?
2. If rules are equal and absolute how do we resolve conflict among these rules?
3. Can a moral rule truly be without exceptions?
4. Is it possible to avoid consideration of consequences in all moral judgments?

Conclusion
 Nonconsequentialist theories of morality have advantages and disadvantages overall:
 Advantages vs Disadvantages of Non-consequentialism
Advantages:
 Do not have to compute consequences
 Provide strong guidance in rules
 Ground systems on something other than consequences and avoid cost-benefit analysis

Disadvantages:
 Ignores consequences of acts or rules
 Divided over which rules are best to follow and why
 Unclear how to resolve conflict between rules
 Seems to close down moral discussion
 Blogging Discussion Question
To what extent are emotions or feelings important to a moral system? Be specific, and explain how
you think emotions or feelings relate to morality.