Author Topic: Philosophy time: consequentialism  (Read 2812 times)

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Offline dorkvader

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Philosophy time: consequentialism
« on: Mon, 01 December 2014, 21:23:54 »
I was reading this blog post when I came on this startling quote:
Quote
Most people are not consequentialists, but most people feel implicitly uncomfortable making moral arguments on non-consequentialist grounds.

I identify as non-consequentialist because after many years of thought it's the philosophy of ethics I find suits me best (note that I don't say that it's the most useful or easiest to apply or anything like that. Those other aspects may be true, but inherently it all seems to come down to a person's opinion)

But I thought I was in the minority. Are most people non-consequentialists?

Perhaps non-consequentialism is more popular with continental philosophers (european continant) like Kant, whereas the bastion of consequentialism seems to be in analytic philosophy (UK and USA) of Bentham, Mill, et al. Living in the US I've met with a significant majority of analytical philosophers. Some departments had a token continental philosopher and it is in general quite rare here.

Here's a quick definition.
Consequentialism deals with ethical problems by considering the consequences. In the famous trolley problem, you think about what happens after you pull the level, then work backwards to figure out how to achieve your desired outcome from the consequence you imagined. Non-consequentialist philosophers have great discussions about moral luck.
Non-consequentialism is the opposite: it does not consider the consequences. From an ethical perspective, you know everything that matters to make an ethical decision going in, and do not seek justification in what happens after you make that choice. For a non-consequentialist philosopher, the problem of moral luck is a non-issue.

A consequentialist could say something like "the ends justify the means" (keep in mind that this is an oversimplification)
A non-consequentialist could say something like "some actions (like lying) are inherently wrong, regardless of circumstance" (again, this is more of a moral absolutist claim which is a type of non-consequentialism; I'm just trying to give easy examples here)
wikipedia article on non-consequentialism
Wikipedia article on consequentialism
stanford encyclopedia of philosophy on non-consequentialism
stanford encyclopedia of philosophy on consequentialism

Another way to think about it is to the non-consequestialist, your motivations going in are more important than the outcome. To a consequentialist, the outcome is more what matters.

So that's a crash course. I invite people with more of a philosophical background to better explain this, but the main question is this:

TL;DR: are you a non-consequentialist

Tally:
consequentialnon-consequential
13
« Last Edit: Mon, 01 December 2014, 23:21:14 by dorkvader »

Offline nubbinator

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Re: Philosophy time: consequentialism
« Reply #1 on: Mon, 01 December 2014, 22:08:53 »
Now you're making me think back to my ethics class I took in grad school.  Tons of great discussions were had in there.

Personally, I'm a non-consequentialist from a philosophical standpoint.  The biggest problem with the consequentialist outlook is scope.  By that I mean the beginning and ending of the causal order of the good.  To truly determine whether an action is good or bad from a consequentialist perspective, you have to see where it fits within the web of action and reaction to the point where it becomes impossible to disentangle whether an action is good or bad.  For example, if a kid gets bullied and teased to the point where he commits suicide, the bullying was a bad thing; however, if he would have been the next Pol Pot, the bullying was a good thing.  Of course, if his becoming the next Kim Jong-Sun ultimately caused the world to unite and liberate a people who would have otherwise remained in poverty, being oppressed and in fear for their lives, then it was a bad thing. 

Or, if you only want to analyze the what happened instead of the what could have happened, suppose his suicide then causes his parents to start a non-profit that is responsible for saving the lives of thousands of bullied kids.  Is not the bullying a good thing since it caused a suicide that then saved the lives of thousands of others?

Furthermore, from the consequentialist perspective, everything threatens to devolve into a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy where it is impossible to tell if an action  directly caused the result, if it was merely a part in causing the end result that would have ended the same way regardless of action, or if the action had any impact at all on the subsequent action.  It implies a cold utilitarian calculus with strict if, then clauses and an ontological certainty of good.

I tend to be more phenomenological than utilitarian in my philosophical approach.  I also don't believe you can truly know whether an action was good by its results since we rarely see the full extent of the results and it can be impossible to tell whether the action truly caused the reaction by which we judge it.

That said, I think that we sometimes apply a consequentialist justification to actions we know are wrong.  We tell "white lies" because we know that even though they're wrong, they may be beneficial in the grand scope of things.  That doesn't make the action any less wrong though.  An action can have a good result, but still be wrong when you do it.

I'm no philosopher though and it's been forever since I've thought or talked about this stuff.  It is quite fun though.

Offline noisyturtle

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Re: Philosophy time: consequentialism
« Reply #2 on: Mon, 01 December 2014, 22:11:28 »
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Offline jdcarpe

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Re: Philosophy time: consequentialism
« Reply #3 on: Mon, 01 December 2014, 22:15:54 »
My personal philosophy is this: I make my own decisions, and live with them. One must make choices based upon knowing the probable outcomes of one's actions, and then take action with either respect or indifference to the consequences. If I make my own choices, I cannot blame someone else for my fate, nor can anyone else take credit for my own decisions. Live or die, succeed or fail, I make my own way in this world.

Does that make me a consequentialist or non-consequentialist?
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Offline engicoder

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Re: Philosophy time: consequentialism
« Reply #4 on: Mon, 01 December 2014, 23:00:44 »
I am descendant from a long line of Puritans/Congregationalist/Unitarian Universalist ancestors. As such, a certain amount of guilt and self doubt have always played a large part in my sense of propriety. My conception of the morally correctness of my actions is based on the nature of my inner motives and how they are be judged by the community of my upbringing. Regardless of the outcome, my actions are morally right if my motives were morally correct. Despite having moved around the country over the years, my morals and ethical sense of right and wrong remain unchanged.
« Last Edit: Mon, 01 December 2014, 23:02:43 by engicoder »
   

Offline dorkvader

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Re: Philosophy time: consequentialism
« Reply #5 on: Mon, 01 December 2014, 23:13:32 »
Does that make me a consequentialist or non-consequentialist?
One must make choices based upon knowing the probable outcomes of one's actions
I would say this is a consequentialist position.


Nubbinator brings up a good point about causality He states
Quote
Furthermore, from the consequentialist perspective, everything threatens to devolve into a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy where it is impossible to tell if an action  directly caused the result, if it was merely a part in causing the end result that would have ended the same way regardless of action, or if the action had any impact at all on the subsequent action.
This is one issue I have the consequentialism. How do you dodge the causality bullet? We know things cause other things, but it's a fallacy to look at the consequences and "know" what the cause was (we call this "post hoc, ergo proper hoc or "after this, therefore because of this". It's better put in English: Correlation does not imply causation). We can induce or abduce a probable cause based on logic but you can't know.

Then take action with either respect or indifference to the consequences.
I think this is your response to the potential issue. If I read you right, you take action based on what you think the consequences may be, but also accept the outcome without passing the buck. I would say this is one of my favorite consequentialist positions I've heard thus far, as it answers clearly a lot of the potential issues that can arise with moral luck.

I guess what I'm saying is this:

One good part about non consequentialism is that you always know what is right going into an ethical problem. a "true" consequential position would not know if they took the right action or the wrong one until they saw the consequence, which doesn't help when you're leading up to the action and trying to decide. On the flip side, this makes it much harder to figure out what is actually right.

But instead if you just take the consequences into consideration, and then don't judge yourself based on the result, it's a halfway measure. you know the action you took was the right one (regardless of a good or bad consequence).

I was reading a book once where a military person made a difficult choice in a battle. He asked his officer later if it was right or not. The officer replied that he does not second guess his people in the field. This makes a lot of sense to me, as only the guy on the ground has full access to the info, and any choice he makes must be considered. You can look at the effects and try to second guess someone in hindsight, but you can't know if another action would be better or worse from that.

In a similar way, you don't second guess your prior actions. They were made with all the information you had available, using a method that is ethical (taking into account a good outcome) and therefore they must be correct. I rather like that.
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defaecare ergo sum epistemology is next month.

I am descendant from a long line of Puritans/Congregationalist/Unitarian Universalist ancestors. As such, a certain amount of guilt and self doubt have always played a large part in my sense of propriety. My conception of the morally correctness of my actions is based on the nature of my inner motives and how they are be judged by the community of my upbringing. Regardless of the outcome, my actions are morally right if my motives were morally correct. Despite having moved around the country over the years, my morals and ethical sense of right and wrong remain unchanged.
Very much non-consequential, similar to my own. You may be interested in reading Kant sometime.
« Last Edit: Mon, 01 December 2014, 23:17:59 by dorkvader »

Offline tp4tissue

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Re: Philosophy time: consequentialism
« Reply #6 on: Mon, 01 December 2014, 23:47:34 »
I don't think the distinction is valid..


Running a simulation of the potential future requires prior knowledge of at least one of the variables in play..

That is not unlike Moral Guidance.. as moral guidance is just the bite size messages left by the people of the past, who have tried similar things..  so that Moral Guidance is the SAME as the ENDS which justified the means for Previous Trials..

So it doesn't matter how much you weigh one type of advice over the other...  you're still building off of OLD acquired knowledge to some degree..



So the consequentialist and non-consequentialist are really doing the same thing..   they just talk about it differently..



   

Offline jdcarpe

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Re: Philosophy time: consequentialism
« Reply #7 on: Mon, 01 December 2014, 23:47:58 »
Sometimes, one cannot know which outcome of a decision will be the better one. In that case, the best course of action is the one you take. The important thing is not to obsess over the decision too much. That could lead to lack of ability to actually make a decision (inaction), and thus you would be at the mercy of external forces. As you said, looking back in hindsight, you may be able to discern that you made mistakes, but that is actually less important than the act of making the decision and following through with it. Everyone will make mistakes along the way, but as long as you endeavor to learn from your mistakes, the outcome is not a failure.

All of this is assuming, of course, that you have some sort of ethical foundation upon which to base your informed decisions. Otherwise, one outcome is as "good" as the next.
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Offline Oobly

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Re: Philosophy time: consequentialism
« Reply #8 on: Tue, 02 December 2014, 05:22:29 »
Hey man, don't put me in a box, 'mkay?

People make decisions based on the facts on hand. Debating over the POSSIBLE consequences is just gonna get you stuck (although in most cases, the most likely consequences will influence the decision). As JD says, sometimes just making a decision is the most important thing. You get better at doing something as you practice doing that thing. In fact, sometimes you will instinctively choose the right path when the external factors (and the visible most likely consequences) would suggest it's the "wrong" one. Comes from experience and "training" that instinct.

Most philosophy is simply mental masturbation. Self-gratifying, but not like the real thing.

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Offline baldgye

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Re: Philosophy time: consequentialism
« Reply #9 on: Tue, 02 December 2014, 05:27:35 »
Why can't you be both depending on the circumstances?
I never did philosophy at school and so haven't really done much reading or debating about it, although I read the OP and some of the posts here, don't see why you can be both...

Offline Oobly

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Re: Philosophy time: consequentialism
« Reply #10 on: Tue, 02 December 2014, 05:53:09 »
“To be is to do”—Socrates.
“To do is to be”—Jean-Paul Sartre.
“Do be do be do”—Frank Sinatra.
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Offline ConscienceDrop

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Re: Philosophy time: consequentialism
« Reply #11 on: Tue, 02 December 2014, 06:13:47 »
I'm a phil major; at the risk of sounding hyperbolic, (but not truly being so) I can assure you most people who have done the readings are non-consequentialists

Any compelling argument for consequentialism does not really display any moral imperative. They usually just look at an example with hindsight and try to persuade you by "trading" more good for less bad in a utilitarian sort of way.

There are some compelling theories that hold a certain kind of consequentialism but usually they are tied up in political/economic ideas as well when they are compelling at all. Morally speaking, as in "how should i live my life; how is it proper for ME to act" consequentialism is usually very bad/unhelpful.

Another scary thing about consequentialism is that because life is never lived in hindsight oftentimes consequentialist reasoning can be given as a way of getting people to do REALLY bad things to each other.
"if we didnt bomb that village they would all turn into terrorists!"
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« Last Edit: Tue, 02 December 2014, 06:30:04 by ConscienceDrop »

Offline baldgye

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Re: Philosophy time: consequentialism
« Reply #12 on: Tue, 02 December 2014, 06:49:54 »
So I read some more of this thread, and philosophy (from what I can see) seems to be an exercise in showing off how much of the thesaurus you've read...

Offline fohat.digs

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Re: Philosophy time: consequentialism
« Reply #13 on: Tue, 02 December 2014, 07:19:21 »

everything threatens to devolve into a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy where it is impossible to tell if an action  directly caused the result

It implies a cold utilitarian calculus with strict if, then clauses and an ontological certainty of good.


Decision-making is the cornerstone of thinking, even at a sub-human level.

I doubt that we would discuss the "thinking" of a squirrel, but he has to make a decision on exposing himself by running across an open piece of ground to another tree. Is that (possible, but not certain) lode of nuts worth the risk of being seen by a passing hawk? And - does he consciously know that doing it once means doing it twice, since he will also have to return home?

Often, I look at these questions from the perspective of a non-human and it makes them easier to handle.

My personal decision-making process is complex and informed by the cumulative experiences of my life.

I would like to be able to apply both principles to every decision: I would always like to do the proper and morally correct thing, but I am perhaps more concerned that the final outcome be optimal.
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Offline vivalarevolución

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Re: Philosophy time: consequentialism
« Reply #14 on: Tue, 02 December 2014, 10:49:02 »
“To be is to do”—Socrates.
“To do is to be”—Jean-Paul Sartre.
“Do be do be do”—Frank Sinatra.

Thanks, Kurt.
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Offline vivalarevolución

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Re: Philosophy time: consequentialism
« Reply #15 on: Tue, 02 December 2014, 11:10:01 »
Why are there so many good blogs on the Interwebs and not enough time?  This annoys me.

Consequentialism seems to provide justification for hurtful or heinous acts that sacrifice some individuals for the "greater good," which can mean anything the justifier would like it to.

 
Sometimes, one cannot know which outcome of a decision will be the better one. In that case, the best course of action is the one you take. The important thing is not to obsess over the decision too much. That could lead to lack of ability to actually make a decision (inaction), and thus you would be at the mercy of external forces. As you said, looking back in hindsight, you may be able to discern that you made mistakes, but that is actually less important than the act of making the decision and following through with it. Everyone will make mistakes along the way, but as long as you endeavor to learn from your mistakes, the outcome is not a failure.

All of this is assuming, of course, that you have some sort of ethical foundation upon which to base your informed decisions. Otherwise, one outcome is as "good" as the next.

You just described the last two years of my life.  Thank you.
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Offline FoxWolf1

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Re: Philosophy time: consequentialism
« Reply #16 on: Tue, 02 December 2014, 21:50:30 »
Wanna see something funny? Try your survey again after everyone has had a few drinks.
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Offline dorkvader

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Re: Philosophy time: consequentialism
« Reply #17 on: Tue, 02 December 2014, 23:14:07 »
Wanna see something funny? Try your survey again after everyone has had a few drinks.

Whoah that's crazy! Thanks for the link.

Offline tp4tissue

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Re: Philosophy time: consequentialism
« Reply #18 on: Wed, 03 December 2014, 04:31:48 »
Wanna see something funny? Try your survey again after everyone has had a few drinks.

Whoah that's crazy! Thanks for the link.

it's not crazy at all.. 

Your brain is a differential matrix..  that's it..... whatever Humanity or seeming absurdity is infact a miscalculation and/or a truncated/ approximated result..

Offline tp4tissue

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Re: Philosophy time: consequentialism
« Reply #19 on: Wed, 03 December 2014, 06:14:31 »
I'm a phil major; at the risk of sounding hyperbolic, (but not truly being so) I can assure you most people who have done the readings are non-consequentialists

Any compelling argument for consequentialism does not really display any moral imperative. They usually just look at an example with hindsight and try to persuade you by "trading" more good for less bad in a utilitarian sort of way.

There are some compelling theories that hold a certain kind of consequentialism but usually they are tied up in political/economic ideas as well when they are compelling at all. Morally speaking, as in "how should i live my life; how is it proper for ME to act" consequentialism is usually very bad/unhelpful.

Another scary thing about consequentialism is that because life is never lived in hindsight oftentimes consequentialist reasoning can be given as a way of getting people to do REALLY bad things to each other.
"if we didnt bomb that village they would all turn into terrorists!"
i wont godwin the thread, but use your imagination.  :'(


But more basically..  if they decide -at all- they're basing that off some prior information or precedence..

we don't know what happened at the ORIGIN,   but we know that anything in the middle is the result of proximate influences.

Offline skrotnisse

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Re: Philosophy time: consequentialism
« Reply #20 on: Wed, 03 December 2014, 19:08:32 »
Phil major here.

Neither,  I'm all in on virtue ethics. I believe that a moral life or actions is a way of being rather than an expression of duty or outcomes  :)

Offline dorkvader

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Re: Philosophy time: consequentialism
« Reply #21 on: Wed, 03 December 2014, 22:47:37 »
Phil major here.

Neither,  I'm all in on virtue ethics. I believe that a moral life or actions is a way of being rather than an expression of duty or outcomes  :)
I know we'd get one.

Virtue ethics is pretty cool. I like virtue epistemology, so I'll have to look into virtue ethics a little more sometime.

Offline skrotnisse

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Re: Philosophy time: consequentialism
« Reply #22 on: Thu, 04 December 2014, 02:59:16 »
Phil major here.

Neither,  I'm all in on virtue ethics. I believe that a moral life or actions is a way of being rather than an expression of duty or outcomes  :)
I know we'd get one.

Virtue ethics is pretty cool. I like virtue epistemology, so I'll have to look into virtue ethics a little more sometime.

You should  :)

Aristotle - Nicomachean Ethics and the Stanford edu on Virtue Ethics are both great as starters.

http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.html

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/