## 1. Classic Utilitarianism



The paradigm case of consequentialism is utilitarianism, whose classic
proponents were Jeremy Bentham (1789), John Stuart Mill (1861), and
Henry Sidgwick (1907). (For predecessors, see Schneewind 1997, 2002.)
Classic utilitarians held hedonistic act consequentialism. *Act
consequentialism* is the claim that an act is morally right if and
only if that act maximizes the good, that is, if and only if the total
amount of good for all minus the total amount of bad for all is
greater than this net amount for any incompatible act available to the
agent on that occasion. (Cf. Moore 1912, chs. 1-2.)
*Hedonism* then claims that pleasure is the only intrinsic good
and that pain is the only intrinsic bad.



These claims are often summarized in the slogan that an act is right
if and only if it causes "the greatest happiness for the
greatest number." This slogan is misleading, however. An act can
increase happiness for most (the greatest number of) people but still
fail to maximize the net good in the world if the smaller number of
people whose happiness is not increased lose much more than the
greater number gains. The principle of utility would not allow that
kind of sacrifice of the smaller number to the greater number unless
the net good overall is increased more than any alternative.



Classic utilitarianism is consequentialist as opposed to deontological
because of what it denies. It denies that moral rightness depends
directly on anything other than consequences, such as whether the
agent promised in the past to do the act now. Of course, the fact that
the agent promised to do the act might indirectly affect the
act's consequences if breaking the promise will make other
people unhappy. Nonetheless, according to classic utilitarianism, what
makes it morally wrong to break the promise is its future effects on
those other people rather than the fact that the agent promised in the
past (Sinnott-Armstrong 2009).



Since classic utilitarianism reduces all morally relevant factors
(Kagan 1998, 17-22) to consequences, it might appear simple.
However, classic utilitarianism is actually a complex combination of
many distinct claims, including the following claims about the moral
rightness of acts:



> 
> 
> Consequentialism = whether an act is morally right depends only on
> *consequences* (as opposed to the circumstances or the
> intrinsic nature of the act or anything that happens before the
> act).
> 
> 
> 
> Actual Consequentialism = whether an act is morally right depends only
> on the *actual* consequences (as opposed to foreseen,
> foreseeable, intended, or likely consequences).
> 
> 
> 
> Direct Consequentialism = whether an act is morally right depends only
> on the consequences of *that act itself* (as opposed to the
> consequences of the agent's motive, of a rule or practice that
> covers other acts of the same kind, and so on).
> 
> 
> 
> Evaluative Consequentialism = moral rightness depends only on the
> *value* of the consequences (as opposed to non-evaluative
> features of the consequences).
> 
> 
> 
> Hedonism = the value of the consequences depends only on the
> *pleasures* and *pains* in the consequences (as opposed
> to other supposed goods, such as freedom, knowledge, life, and so
> on).
> 
> 
> 
> Maximizing Consequentialism = moral rightness depends only on which
> consequences are *best* (as opposed to merely satisfactory or
> an improvement over the status quo).
> 
> 
> 
> Aggregative Consequentialism = which consequences are best is some
> function of the values of *parts* of those consequences (as
> opposed to rankings of whole worlds or sets of consequences).
> 
> 
> 
> Total Consequentialism = moral rightness depends only on the
> *total* net good in the consequences (as opposed to the average
> net good per person).
> 
> 
> 
> Universal Consequentialism = moral rightness depends on the
> consequences for *all* people or sentient beings (as opposed to
> only the individual agent, members of the individual's society,
> present people, or any other limited group).
> 
> 
> 
> Equal Consideration = in determining moral rightness, benefits to one
> person matter *just as much* as similar benefits to any other
> person (as opposed to putting more weight on the worse or worst
> off).
> 
> 
> 
> Agent-neutrality = whether some consequences are better than others
> does not depend on whether the consequences are evaluated from the
> perspective of the agent (as opposed to an observer).
> 
> 
> 



These claims could be clarified, supplemented, and subdivided further.
What matters here is just that most pairs of these claims are
logically independent, so a moral theorist could consistently accept
some of them without accepting others. Yet classic utilitarians
accepted them all. That fact makes classic utilitarianism a more
complex theory than it might appear at first sight.



It also makes classic utilitarianism subject to attack from many
angles. Persistent opponents posed plenty of problems for classic
utilitarianism. Each objection led some utilitarians to give up some
of the original claims of classic utilitarianism. By dropping one or
more of those claims, descendants of utilitarianism can construct a
wide variety of moral theories. Advocates of these theories often call
them consequentialism rather than utilitarianism so that their
theories will not be subject to refutation by association with the
classic utilitarian theory.


## 2. What is Consequentialism?



This array of alternatives raises the question of which moral theories
count as consequentialist (as opposed to deontological) and why. In
actual usage, the term "consequentialism" seems to be used
as a family resemblance term to refer to any descendant of classic
utilitarianism that remains close enough to its ancestor in the
important respects. Of course, different philosophers see different
respects as the important ones (Portmore 2020). Hence, there is no
agreement on which theories count as consequentialist under this
definition.



To resolve this vagueness, we need to determine which of the various
claims of classic utilitarianism are essential to consequentialism.
One claim seems clearly necessary. Any consequentialist theory must
accept the claim that I labeled "consequentialism",
namely, that certain normative properties depend only on consequences.
If that claim is dropped, the theory ceases to be
consequentialist.



It is less clear whether that claim by itself is sufficient to make a
theory consequentialist. Several philosophers assert that a moral
theory should not be classified as consequentialist unless it is
agent-neutral (McNaughton and Rawling 1991, Howard-Snyder 1994, Pettit
1997). This narrower definition is motivated by the fact that many
self-styled critics of consequentialism argue against
agent-neutrality.



Other philosophers prefer a broader definition that does not require a
moral theory to be agent-neutral in order to be consequentialist
(Bennett 1989; Broome 1991, 5-6; and Skorupski 1995). Criticisms
of agent-neutrality can then be understood as directed against one
part of classic utilitarianism that need not be adopted by every moral
theory that is consequentialist. Moreover, according to those who
prefer a broader definition of consequentialism, the narrower
definition conflates independent claims and obscures a crucial
commonality between agent-neutral consequentialism and other moral
theories that focus exclusively on consequences, such as moral egoism
and recent self-styled consequentialists who allow agent-relativity
into their theories of value (Sen 1982, Broome 1991, Portmore 2001,
2003, 2011).



A definition solely in terms of consequences might seem too broad,
because it includes absurd theories such as the theory that an act is
morally right if it increases the number of goats in Texas. Of course,
such theories are implausible. Still, it is not implausible to call
them consequentialist, since they do look only at consequences. The
implausibility of one version of consequentialism does not make
consequentialism implausible in general, since other versions of
consequentialism still might be plausible.



Besides, anyone who wants to pick out a smaller set of moral theories
that excludes this absurd theory may talk about evaluative
consequentialism, which is the claim that moral rightness depends only
on the value of the consequences. Then those who want to talk about
the even smaller group of moral theories that accepts both evaluative
consequentialism and agent-neutrality may describe them as
agent-neutral evaluative consequentialism. If anyone still insists on
calling these smaller groups of theories by the simple name,
'consequentialism', this narrower word usage will not
affect any substantive issue.



Still, if the definition of consequentialism becomes too broad, it
might seem to lose force. Some philosophers have argued that any moral
theory, or at least any plausible moral theory, could be represented
as a version of consequentialism (Sosa 1993, Portmore 2009, Dreier
1993 and 2011; but see Brown 2011). If so, then it means little to
label a theory as consequentialist. The real content comes only by
contrasting theories that are not consequentialist.



In the end, what matters is only that we get clear about which
theories a particular commentator counts as consequentialist or not
and which claims are supposed to make them consequentialist or not.
Only then can we know which claims are at stake when this commentator
supports or criticizes what they call "consequentialism".
Then we can ask whether each objection really refutes that particular
claim.


## 3. What is Good? Hedonistic vs. Pluralistic Consequentialisms



Some moral theorists seek a single simple basic principle because they
assume that simplicity is needed in order to decide what is right when
less basic principles or reasons conflict. This assumption seems to
make hedonism attractive. Unfortunately, however, hedonism is not as
simple as they assume, because hedonists count both pleasures and
pains. Pleasure is distinct from the absence of pain, and pain is
distinct from the absence of pleasure, since sometimes people feel
neither pleasure nor pain, and sometimes they feel both at once.
Nonetheless, hedonism was adopted partly because it seemed simpler
than competing views.



The simplicity of hedonism was also a source of opposition. From the
start, the hedonism in classic utilitarianism was treated with
contempt. Some contemporaries of Bentham and Mill argued that hedonism
lowers the value of human life to the level of animals, because it
implies that, as Bentham said, an unsophisticated game (such as
push-pin) is as good as highly intellectual poetry if the game creates
as much pleasure (Bentham 1843). *Quantitative* hedonists
sometimes respond that great poetry almost always creates more
pleasure than trivial games (or sex and drugs and rock-and-roll),
because the pleasures of poetry are more certain (or probable),
durable (or lasting), fecund (likely to lead to other pleasures), pure
(unlikely to lead to pains), and so on.



Mill used a different strategy to avoid calling push-pin as good as
poetry. He distinguished higher and lower qualities of pleasures
according to the preferences of people who have experienced both kinds
(Mill 1861, 56; compare Plato 1993 and Hutcheson 1755, 421-23).
This *qualitative* hedonism has been subjected to much
criticism, including charges that it is incoherent and does not count
as hedonism (Moore 1903, 80-81; cf. Feldman 1997,
106-24).



Even if qualitative hedonism is coherent and is a kind of hedonism, it
still might not seem plausible. Some critics argue that not
*all* pleasures are valuable, since, for example, there is no
value in the pleasures that a sadist gets from whipping a victim or
that an addict gets from drugs. Other opponents object that not
*only* pleasures are intrinsically valuable, because other
things are valuable independently of whether they lead to pleasure or
avoid pain. For example, my love for my wife does not seem to become
less valuable when I get less pleasure from her because she contracts
some horrible disease. Similarly, freedom seems valuable even when it
creates anxiety, and even when it is freedom to do something (such as
leave one's country) that one does not want to do. Again, many
people value knowledge of distant galaxies regardless of whether this
knowledge will create pleasure or avoid pain.



These points against hedonism are often supplemented with the story of
the experience machine found in Nozick 1974 (42-45; cf. De
Brigard 2010) and the movie, *The Matrix*. People on this
machine *believe* they are spending time with their friends,
winning Olympic gold medals and Nobel prizes, having sex with their
favorite lovers, or doing whatever gives them the greatest balance of
pleasure over pain. Although they have no real friends or lovers and
actually accomplish nothing, people on the experience machine get just
as much pleasure as if their beliefs were true. Moreover, they feel no
(or little) pain. Assuming that the machine is reliable, it would seem
irrational not to hook oneself up to this machine *if* pleasure
and pain were all that mattered, as hedonists claim. Since it does
*not* seem irrational to refuse to hook oneself up to this
machine, hedonism seems inadequate. The reason is that hedonism
overlooks the value of *real* friendship, knowledge, freedom,
and achievements, all of which are lacking for deluded people on the
experience machine.



Some hedonists claim that this objection rests on a misinterpretation
of hedonism. If hedonists see pleasure and pain as
*sensations*, then a machine might be able to reproduce those
sensations. However, we can also say that a mother is pleased that her
daughter gets good grades. Such *propositional* pleasure occurs
only when the state of affairs in which the person takes pleasure
exists (that is, when the daughter actually gets good grades). But the
relevant states of affairs would not really exist if one were hooked
up to the experience machine. Hence, hedonists who value propositional
pleasure rather than or in addition to sensational pleasure can deny
that more pleasure is achieved by hooking oneself up to such an
experience machine (Feldman 1997, 79-105; see also
Tannsjo 1998 and Feldman 2004 for more on hedonism).



A related position rests on the claim that what is good is desire
satisfaction or the fulfillment of preferences; and what is bad is the
frustration of desires or preferences. What is desired or preferred is
usually not a sensation but is, rather, a state of affairs, such as
having a friend or accomplishing a goal. If a person desires or
prefers to have true friends and true accomplishments and not to be
deluded, then hooking this person up to the experience machine need
not maximize desire satisfaction. Utilitarians who adopt this theory
of value can then claim that an agent morally ought to do an act if
and only if that act maximizes desire satisfaction or preference
fulfillment (that is, the degree to which the act achieves whatever is
desired or preferred). What maximizes desire satisfaction or
preference fulfillment need not maximize sensations of pleasure when
what is desired or preferred is not a sensation of pleasure. This
position is usually described as *preference
utilitarianism*.



One problem for preference utilitarianism concerns how to make
interpersonal comparisons (though this problem also arises for several
other theories of value). If we want to know what one person prefers,
we can ask what that person would choose in conflicts. We cannot,
however, use the same method to determine whether one person's
preference is stronger or weaker than another person's
preference, since these different people might choose differently in
the decisive conflicts. We need to settle which preference (or
pleasure) is stronger because we may know that Jones prefers A's
being done to A's not being done (and Jones would receive more
pleasure from A's being done than from A's not being
done), whereas Smith prefers A's not being done (and Smith would
receive more pleasure from A's not being done than from
A's being done). To determine whether it is right to do A or not
to do A, we must be able to compare the strengths of Jones's and
Smith's preferences (or the amounts of pleasure each would
receive in her preferred outcome) in order to determine whether doing
A or not doing A would be better overall. Utilitarians and
consequentialists have proposed many ways to solve this problem of
interpersonal comparison, and each attempt has received criticisms.
Debates about this problem still rage. (For a recent discussion with
references, see Coakley 2015.)



Preference utilitarianism is also often criticized on the grounds that
some preferences are misinformed, crazy, horrendous, or trivial. I
might prefer to drink the liquid in a glass because I think that it is
beer, though it really is strong acid. Or I might prefer to die merely
because I am clinically depressed. Or I might prefer to torture
children. Or I might prefer to spend my life learning to write as
small as possible. In all such cases, opponents of preference
utilitarianism can deny that what I prefer is really good. Preference
utilitarians can respond by limiting the preferences that make
something good, such as by referring to informed desires that do not
disappear after therapy (Brandt 1979). However, it is not clear that
such qualifications can solve all of the problems for a preference
theory of value without making the theory circular by depending on
substantive assumptions about which preferences are for good
things.



Many consequentialists deny that all values can be reduced to any
single ground, such as pleasure or desire satisfaction, so they
instead adopt a pluralistic theory of value. Moore's *ideal
utilitarianism*, for example, takes into account the values of
beauty and truth (or knowledge) in addition to pleasure (Moore 1903,
83-85, 194; 1912). Other consequentialists add the intrinsic
values of friendship or love, freedom or ability, justice or fairness,
desert, life, virtue, and so on.



If the recognized values all concern individual welfare, then the
theory of value can be called *welfarist* (Sen 1979). When a
welfarist theory of value is combined with the other elements of
classic utilitarianism, the resulting theory can be called
*welfarist consequentialism*.



One non-welfarist theory of value is *perfectionism*, which
claims that certain states make a person's life good without
necessarily being good for the person in any way that increases that
person's welfare (Hurka 1993, esp. 17). If this theory of value
is combined with other elements of classic utilitarianism, the
resulting theory can be called *perfectionist consequentialism*
or, in deference to its Aristotelian roots, *eudaemonistic
consequentialism*.



Similarly, some consequentialists hold that an act is right if and
only if it maximizes some function of both happiness and capabilities
(Sen 1985, Nussbaum 2000). Disabilities are then seen as bad
regardless of whether they are accompanied by pain or loss of
pleasure.



Or one could hold that an act is right if it maximizes fulfillment (or
minimizes violation) of certain specified moral rights. Such theories
are sometimes described as a *utilitarianism of rights*. This
approach could be built into total consequentialism with rights
weighed against happiness and other values or, alternatively, the
disvalue of rights violations could be lexically ranked prior to any
other kind of loss or harm (cf. Rawls 1971, 42). Such a lexical
ranking within a consequentialist moral theory would yield the result
that nobody is ever justified in violating rights for the sake of
happiness or any value other than rights, although it would still
allow some rights violations in order to avoid or prevent other rights
violations.



When consequentialists incorporate a variety of values, they need to
rank or weigh each value against the others. This is often difficult.
Some consequentialists even hold that certain values are
incommensurable or incomparable in that no comparison of their values
is possible (Griffin 1986 and Chang 1997). This position allows
consequentialists to recognize the possibility of irresolvable moral
dilemmas (Sinnott-Armstrong 1988, 81; Railton 2003, 249-91).



Pluralism about values also enables consequentialists to handle many
of the problems that plague hedonistic utilitarianism. For example,
opponents often charge that classical utilitarians cannot explain our
obligations to keep promises and not to lie when no pain is caused or
pleasure is lost. Whether or not hedonists can meet this challenge,
pluralists can hold that knowledge is intrinsically good and/or that
false belief is intrinsically bad. Then, if deception causes false
beliefs, deception is instrumentally bad, and agents ought not to lie
without a good reason, even when lying causes no pain or loss of
pleasure. Since lying is an attempt to deceive, to lie is to attempt
to do what is morally wrong (in the absence of defeating factors).
Similarly, if a promise to do an act is an attempt to make an audience
believe that the promiser will do the act, then to break a promise is
for a promiser to make false a belief that the promiser created or
tried to create. Although there is more tale to tell, the disvalue of
false belief can be part of a consequentialist story about why it is
morally wrong to break promises.



When such pluralist versions of consequentialism are not welfarist,
some philosophers would not call them *utilitarian*. However,
this usage is not uniform, since even non-welfarist views are
sometimes called utilitarian. Whatever you call them, the important
point is that consequentialism and the other elements of classical
utilitarianism are compatible with many different theories about which
things are good or valuable.



Instead of turning pluralist, some consequentialists foreswear the
aggregation of values. Classic utilitarianism added up the values
within each part of the consequences to determine which total set of
consequences has the most value in it. One could, instead, aggregate
goods for each individual but not aggregate goods of separate
individuals (Roberts 2002). Alternatively, one could give up all
aggregation, including aggregation for individuals, and instead rank
the complete worlds or sets of consequences caused by
acts without adding up the values of the parts of those worlds or
consequences. One motive for this move is Moore's principle of
organic unity (Moore 1903, 27-36), which claims that the value
of a combination or "organic unity" of two or more things
cannot be calculated simply by adding the values of the things that
are combined or unified. For example, even if punishment of a criminal
causes pain, a consequentialist can hold that a world with both the
crime and the punishment is better than a world with the crime but not
the punishment, perhaps because the former contains more justice,
without adding the value of this justice to the negative value of
the pain of the punishment. Similarly, a world might seem better
when people do not get pleasures that they do not deserve, even if
this judgment is not reached by adding the values of these pleasures
to other values to calculate any total. Cases like these lead some
consequentialists to deny that moral rightness is any aggregative
function of the values of particular effects of acts. Instead, they
compare the whole world that results from an action with the
whole world that results from not doing that action. If the former is
better, then the action is morally right (J.J.C. Smart 1973, 32;
Feldman 1997, 17-35). This approach can be called *holistic
consequentialism* or *world utilitarianism*.



Another way to incorporate relations among values is to consider
*distribution*. Compare one outcome where most people are
destitute but a few lucky people have extremely large amounts of goods
with another outcome that contains slightly less total goods but where
every person has nearly the same amount of goods. Egalitarian critics
of classical utilitarianism argue that the latter outcome is better,
so more than the total amount of good matters. Traditional hedonistic
utilitarians who prefer the latter outcome often try to justify
egalitarian distributions of goods by appealing to a principle of
diminishing marginal utility. Other consequentialists, however,
incorporate a more robust commitment to equality. Early on, Sidgwick
(1907, 417) responded to such objections by allowing distribution to
break ties between other values. More recently, some consequentialists
have added some notion of fairness (Broome 1991, 192-200) or
desert (Feldman 1997, 154-74) to their test of which outcome is
best. (See also Kagan 1998, 48-59.) Others turn to
prioritarianism, which puts more weight on people who are worse off
(Adler and Norheim 2022, Arneson 2022). Such consequentialists do not
simply add up values; they look at patterns.



A related issue arises from population change. Imagine that a
government considers whether to provide free contraceptives to curb a
rise in population. Without free contraceptives, overcrowding will
bring hunger, disease, and pain, so each person will be worse off.
Still, each new person will have enough pleasure and other goods that
the total net utility will increase with the population. Classic
utilitarianism focuses on total utility, so it seems to imply that
this government should not provide free contraceptives. That seems
implausible to many utilitarians. To avoid this result, some
utilitarians claim that an act is morally wrong if and only if its
consequences contain more pain (or other disvalues) than an
alternative, regardless of positive values (cf. R. N. Smart 1958).
This *negative utilitarianism* implies that the government
should provide contraceptives, since that program reduces pain (and
other disvalues), even though it also decreases total net pleasure (or
good). Unfortunately, negative utilitarianism also seems to imply that
the government should painlessly kill everyone it can, since dead
people feel no pain (and have no false beliefs, diseases, or
disabilities - though killing them does cause loss of ability).
A more popular response is average utilitarianism, which says that the
best consequences are those with the highest average utility (cf.
Rawls 1971, 161-75). The average utility would be higher with
the contraceptive program than without it, so average utilitarianism
yields the more plausible result--that the government should
adopt the contraceptive program. Critics sometimes charge that the
average utility could also be increased by killing the worst off, but
this claim is not at all clear, because such killing would put
everyone in danger (since, after the worst off are killed, another
group becomes the worst off, and then they might be killed next).
Still, average utilitarianism faces problems of its own (such as
"the mere addition paradox" in Parfit 1984, chap. 19). In
any case, all maximizing consequentialists, whether or not they are
pluralists, must decide whether moral rightness depends on maximizing
total good or average good.



A final challenge to consequentialists' accounts of value
derives from Geach 1956 and has been pressed by Thomson 2001. Thomson
argues that "A is a good X" (such as a good poison) does
not entail "A is good", so the term "good" is
an attributive adjective and cannot legitimately be used without
qualification. On this view, it is senseless to call something good
unless this means that it is good for someone or in some respect or
for some use or at some activity or as an instance of some kind.
Consequentialists are supposed to violate this restriction when they
say that the total or average consequences or the world as a whole is
good without any such qualification. However, consequentialists can
respond either that the term "good" has predicative uses
in addition to its attributive uses or that when they call a world or
total set of consequences good, they are calling it good for
consequences or for a world (Sinnott-Armstrong 2003a). If so, the fact
that "good" is often used attributively creates no problem
for consequentialists.


## 4. Which Consequences? Actual vs. Expected Consequentialisms



A second set of problems for classic utilitarianism is
epistemological. Classic utilitarianism seems to require that agents
calculate all consequences of each act for every person for all time.
That's impossible.



This objection rests on a misinterpretation. These critics assume that
the principle of utility is supposed to be used as a *decision
procedure* or *guide*, that is, as a method that agents
consciously apply to acts in advance to help them make decisions.
However, most classic and contemporary utilitarians and
consequentialists do not propose their principles as decision
procedures. (Bales 1971) Bentham wrote, "It is not to be
expected that this process [his hedonic calculus] should be strictly
pursued previously to every moral judgment." (1789, Chap. IV,
Sec. VI) Mill agreed, "it is a misapprehension of the
utilitarian mode of thought to conceive it as implying that people
should fix their minds upon so wide a generality as the world, or
society at large." (1861, Chap. II, Par. 19) Sidgwick added,
"It is not necessary that the end which gives the criterion of
rightness should always be the end at which we consciously aim."
(1907, 413)



Instead, most consequentialists claim that overall utility is the
*criterion* or *standard* of what is morally right or
morally ought to be done. Their theories are intended to spell out the
necessary and sufficient conditions for an act to be morally right,
regardless of whether the agent can tell in advance whether those
conditions are met. Just as the laws of physics govern golf ball
flight, but golfers need not calculate physical forces while planning
shots; so overall utility can determine which decisions are morally
right, even if agents need not calculate utilities while making
decisions. If the principle of utility is used as a criterion of the
right rather than as a decision procedure, then classical
utilitarianism does not require that anyone know the total
consequences of anything before making a decision.



Furthermore, a utilitarian criterion of right implies that it would
not be morally right to use the principle of utility as a decision
procedure in cases where it would not maximize utility to try to
calculate utilities before acting. Utilitarians regularly argue that
most people in most circumstances ought not to try to calculate
utilities, because they are too likely to make serious miscalculations
that will lead them to perform actions that reduce utility. It is even
possible to hold that most agents usually ought to follow their moral
intuitions, because these intuitions evolved to lead us to perform
acts that maximize utility, at least in likely circumstances (Hare
1981, 46-47). Some utilitarians (Sidgwick 1907, 489-90)
suggest that a utilitarian decision procedure may be adopted as an
esoteric morality by an elite group that is better at calculating
utilities, but utilitarians can, instead, hold that nobody should use
the principle of utility as a decision procedure.



This move is supposed to make consequentialism self-refuting,
according to some opponents. However, there is nothing incoherent
about proposing a decision procedure that is separate from one's
criterion of the right. Similar distinctions apply in other normative
realms. The criterion of a good stock investment is its total return,
but the best decision procedure still might be to reduce risk by
buying an index fund or blue-chip stocks. Criteria can, thus, be
self-effacing without being self-refuting (Parfit 1984, chs. 1 and
4).



Others object that this move takes the force out of consequentialism,
because it leads agents to ignore consequentialism when they make real
decisions. However, a criterion of the right can be useful at a higher
level by helping us choose among available decision procedures and
refine our decision procedures as circumstances change and we gain
more experience and knowledge. Hence, most consequentialists do not
mind giving up consequentialism as a direct decision procedure as long
as consequences remain the criterion of rightness (but see Chappell
2001).



If overall utility is the criterion of moral rightness, then it might
seem that nobody could know what is morally right. If so, classical
utilitarianism leads to moral skepticism. However, utilitarians insist
that we can have strong reasons to believe that certain acts reduce
utility, even if we have not yet inspected or predicted every
consequence of those acts. For example, in normal circumstances, if
someone were to torture and kill his children, it is possible that
this would maximize utility, but that is very unlikely. Maybe they
would have grown up to be mass murders, but it is at least as likely
that they would grow up to cure serious diseases or do other great
things, and it is much more likely that they would have led normally
happy (or at least not destructive) lives. So observers as well as
agents have adequate reasons to believe that such acts are morally
wrong, according to act utilitarianism. In many other cases, it will
still be hard to tell whether an act will maximize utility, but that
shows only that there are severe limits to our knowledge of what is
morally right. That should be neither surprising nor problematic for
utilitarians.



If utilitarians want their theory to allow more moral knowledge, they
can make a different kind of move by turning from actual consequences
to expected or expectable consequences. Suppose that Alice finds a
runaway teenager who asks for money to get home. Alice wants to help
and reasonably believes that buying a bus ticket home for this runaway
will help, so she buys a bus ticket and puts the runaway on the bus.
Unfortunately, the bus is involved in a freak accident, and the
runaway is killed. If actual consequences are what determine moral
wrongness, then it was morally wrong for Alice to buy the bus ticket
for this runaway. Opponents claim that this result is absurd enough to
refute classic utilitarianism.



Some utilitarians bite the bullet and say that Alice's act was
morally wrong, but it was blameless wrongdoing, because her motives
were good, and she was not responsible, given that she could not have
foreseen that her act would cause harm. Since this theory makes actual
consequences determine moral rightness, it can be called *actual
consequentialism*.



Other responses claim that moral rightness depends on foreseen,
foreseeable, intended, or likely consequences, rather than actual
ones. Imagine that Bob does not in fact foresee a bad consequence that
would make his act wrong if he did foresee it, but that Bob could
easily have foreseen this bad consequence if he had been paying
attention. Maybe he does not notice the rot on the hamburger he feeds
to his kids which makes them sick. If *foreseen* consequences
are what matter, then Bob's act is not morally wrong. If
*foreseeable* consequences are what matter, then Bob's
act is morally wrong, because the bad consequences were foreseeable.
Now consider Bob's wife, Carol, who notices that the meat is
rotten but does not want to have to buy more, so she feeds it to her
children anyway, hoping that it will not make them sick; but it does.
Carol's act is morally wrong if foreseen or foreseeable
consequences are what matter, but not if what matter are
*intended* consequences, because she does not intend to make
her children sick. Finally, consider Bob and Carol's son Don,
who does not know enough about food to be able to know that eating
rotten meat can make people sick. If Don feeds the rotten meat to his
little sister, and it makes her sick, then the bad consequences are
not intended, foreseen, or even foreseeable by Don, but those bad
results are still objectively *likely* or *probable*,
unlike the case of Alice. Some philosophers deny that probability can
be fully objective, but at least the consequences here are foreseeable
by others who are more informed than Don can be at the time. For Don
to feed the rotten meat to his sister is, therefore, morally wrong if
likely consequences are what matter, but not morally wrong if what
matter are foreseen or foreseeable or intended consequences.



Consequentialist moral theories that focus on actual or objectively
probable consequences are often described as *objective
consequentialism* (Railton 1984). In contrast, consequentialist
moral theories that focus on intended or foreseen consequences are
usually described as *subjective consequentialism*.
Consequentialist moral theories that focus on reasonably foreseeable
consequences are then not subjective insofar as they do not depend on
anything inside the actual subject's mind, but they are
subjective insofar as they do depend on which consequences this
particular subject would foresee if he or she were better informed or
more rational.



One final solution to these epistemological problems deploys the legal
notion of proximate cause. If consequentialists define consequences in
terms of what is caused (unlike Sosa 1993), then which future events
count as consequences is affected by which notion of causation is used
to define consequences. Suppose I give a set of steak knives to a
friend. Unforeseeably, when she opens my present, the decorative
pattern on the knives somehow reminds her of something horrible that
her husband did. This memory makes her so angry that she voluntarily
stabs and kills him with one of the knives. She would not have killed
her husband if I had given her spoons instead of knives. Did my
decision or my act of giving her knives cause her husband's
death? Most people (and the law) would say that the cause was her act,
not mine. Why? One explanation is that her voluntary act intervened in
the causal chain between my act and her husband's death.
Moreover, even if she did not voluntarily kill him, but instead she
slipped and fell on the knives, thereby killing herself, my gift would
still not be a cause of her death, because the coincidence of her
falling intervened between my act and her death. The point is that,
when voluntary acts and coincidences intervene in certain causal
chains, then the results are not seen as caused by the acts further
back in the chain of necessary conditions (Hart and Honore
1985). Now, if we assume that an act must be such a proximate cause of
a harm in order for that harm to be a consequence of that act, then
consequentialists can claim that the moral rightness of that act is
determined only by such proximate consequences. This position, which
might be called *proximate consequentialism*, makes it much
easier for agents and observers to justify moral judgments of acts
because it obviates the need to predict non-proximate consequences in
distant times and places. Hence, this move is worth considering, even
though it has never been developed as far as I know and deviates far
from traditional consequentialism, which counts not only proximate
consequences but all upshots -- that is, everything for which the
act is a causally necessary condition.


## 5. Consequences of What? Rights, Relativity, and Rules



Another problem for utilitarianism is that it seems to overlook
justice and rights. One common illustration is called Transplant.
Imagine that each of five patients in a hospital will die without an
organ transplant. The patient in Room 1 needs a heart, the patient in
Room 2 needs a liver, the patient in Room 3 needs a kidney, and so on.
The person in Room 6 is in the hospital for routine tests. Luckily
(for them, not for him!), his tissue is compatible with the other five
patients, and a specialist is available to transplant his organs into
the other five. This operation would save all five of their lives,
while killing the "donor". There is no other way to save
any of the other five patients (Foot 1966, Thomson 1976; compare
related cases in Carritt 1947 and McCloskey 1965).



We need to add that the organ recipients will emerge healthy, the
source of the organs will remain secret, the doctor won't be
caught or punished for cutting up the "donor", and the
doctor knows all of this to a high degree of probability (despite the
fact that many others will help in the operation). Still, with the
right details filled in (no matter how unrealistic), it looks as if
cutting up the "donor" will maximize utility, since five
lives have more utility than one life (assuming that the five lives do
not contribute too much to overpopulation). If so, then classical
utilitarianism implies that it would not be morally wrong for the
doctor to perform the transplant and even that it would be morally
wrong for the doctor not to perform the transplant. Most people find
this result abominable. They take this example to show how bad it can
be when utilitarians overlook individual rights, such as the unwilling
donor's right to life.



Utilitarians can bite the bullet, again. They can deny that it is
morally wrong to cut up the "donor" in these
circumstances. Of course, doctors still should not cut up their
patients in anything close to normal circumstances, but this example
is so abnormal and unrealistic that we should not expect our normal
moral rules to apply, and we should not trust our moral intuitions,
which evolved to fit normal situations (Sprigge 1965). Many
utilitarians are happy to reject common moral intuitions in this case,
like many others (cf. Singer 1974, Unger 1996, Norcross 1997).



Most utilitarians lack such strong stomachs (or teeth), so they modify
utilitarianism to bring it in line with common moral intuitions,
including the intuition that doctors should not cut up innocent
patients. One attempt claims that a killing is worse than a death. The
doctor would have to kill the "donor" in order to prevent
the deaths of the five patients, but nobody is killed if the five
patients die. If one killing is worse than five deaths that do not
involve killing, then the world that results from the doctor
performing the transplant is worse than the world that results from
the doctor not performing the transplant. With this new theory of
value, consequentialists can agree with others that it is morally
wrong for the doctor to cut up the "donor" in this
example.



A modified example still seems problematic. Just suppose that the five
patients need a kidney, a lung, a heart, and so forth because they
were all victims of murder attempts. Then the world will contain the
five killings of them if they die, but not if they do not die. Thus,
even if killings are worse than deaths that are not killings, the
world will still be better overall (because it will contain fewer
killings as well as fewer deaths) if the doctor cuts up the
"donor" to save the five other patients. But most people
still think it would be morally wrong for the doctor to kill the one
to prevent the five killings. The reason is that it is not the doctor
who kills the five, and the doctor's duty seems to be to reduce
the amount of killing that she herself does. In this view, the doctor
is not required to *promote* life or decrease death or even
decrease killing by other people. The doctor is, instead, required to
*honor* the value of life by not causing loss of life (cf.
Pettit 1997).



This kind of case leads some consequentialists to introduce
agent-relativity into their theory of value (Sen 1982, Broome 1991,
Portmore 2001, 2003, 2011). To apply a consequentialist moral theory,
we need to compare the world with the transplant to the world without
the transplant. If this comparative evaluation must be agent-neutral,
then, if an observer judges that the world with the transplant is
better, the agent must make the same judgment, or else one of them is
mistaken. However, if such evaluations can be agent-relative, then it
could be legitimate for an observer to judge that the world with the
transplant is better (since it contains fewer killings by anyone),
while it is also legitimate for the doctor as agent to judge that the
world with the transplant is worse (because it includes a killing
*by him*). In other cases, such as competitions, it might
maximize the good from an agent's perspective to do an act,
while maximizing the good from an observer's perspective to stop
the agent from doing that very act. If such agent-relative value makes
sense, then it can be built into consequentialism to produce the claim
that an act is morally wrong if and only if the act's
consequences include less overall value from the perspective of the
agent. This *agent-relative consequentialism*, plus the claim
that the world with the transplant is worse from the perspective of
the doctor, could justify the doctor's judgment that it would be
morally wrong for him to perform the transplant. A key move here is to
adopt the agent's perspective in judging the agent's act.
Agent-neutral consequentialists judge all acts from the
observer's perspective, so they would judge the doctor's
act to be wrong, since the world with the transplant is better from an
observer's perspective. In contrast, an agent-relative approach
requires observers to adopt the doctor's perspective in judging
whether it would be morally wrong for the doctor to perform the
transplant. This kind of agent-relative consequentialism is then
supposed to capture commonsense moral intuitions in such cases
(Portmore 2011).



Agent-relativity is also supposed to solve other problems. W. D. Ross
(1930, 34-35) argued that, if breaking a promise created only
slightly more happiness overall than keeping the promise, then the
agent morally ought to break the promise according to classic
utilitarianism. This supposed counterexample cannot be avoided simply
by claiming that keeping promises has agent-neutral value, since
keeping one promise might prevent someone else from keeping another
promise. Still, agent-relative consequentialists can respond that
keeping a promise has great value from the perspective of the agent
who made the promise and chooses whether or not to keep it, so the
world where a promise is kept is better from the agent's
perspective than another world where the promise is not kept, unless
enough other values override the value of keeping the promise. In this
way, agent-relative consequentialists can explain why agents morally
ought not to break their promises in just the kind of case that Ross
raised.



Similarly, critics of utilitarianism often argue that utilitarians
cannot be good friends, because a good friend places more weight on
the welfare of his or her friends than on the welfare of strangers,
but utilitarianism requires impartiality among all people. However,
agent-relative consequentialists can assign more weight to the welfare
of a friend of an agent when assessing the value of the consequences
of that agent's acts. In this way, consequentialists try to
capture common moral intuitions about the duties of friendship (see
also Jackson 1991).



One final variation still causes trouble. Imagine that the doctor
herself wounded the five people who need organs. If the doctor does
not save their lives, then she will have killed them herself. In this
case, even if the doctor can disvalue killings by herself more than
killings by other people, the world still seems better from her own
perspective if she performs the transplant. Critics will object that
it is, nonetheless, morally wrong for the doctor to perform the
transplant. Many people will not find this intuition as clear as in
the other cases, but consequentialists who do find it immoral for the
doctor to perform the transplant even in this case will need to modify
consequentialism in some other way in order to yield the desired
judgment.



This problem cannot be solved by building rights or fairness or desert
into the theory of value. The five do not deserve to die, and they do
deserve their lives, just as much as the one does. Each option
violates someone's right not to be killed and is unfair to
someone. So consequentialists need more than just new values if they
want to avoid endorsing this transplant.



One option is to go indirect. A *direct* consequentialist holds
that the moral qualities of something depend only on the consequences
of that very thing. Thus, a direct consequentialist about motives
holds that the moral qualities of a motive depend on the consequences
of that motive. A direct consequentialist about virtues holds that the
moral qualities of a character trait (such as whether or not it is a
moral virtue) depend on the consequences of that trait (Driver 2001a,
Hurka 2001, Jamieson 2005, Bradley 2005). A direct consequentialist
about acts holds that the moral qualities of an act depend on the
consequences of that act. Someone who adopts direct consequentialism
about everything is a *global* direct consequentialist (Pettit
and Smith 2000, Driver 2012).



In contrast, an *indirect* consequentialist holds that the
moral qualities of something depend on the consequences of something
else. One indirect version of consequentialism is *motive
consequentialism*, which claims that the moral qualities of an act
depend on the consequences of the motive of that act (compare Adams
1976 and Sverdlik 2011). Another indirect version is *virtue
consequentialism*, which holds that whether an act is morally
right depends on whether it stems from or expresses a state of
character that maximizes good consequences and, hence, is a
virtue.



The most common indirect consequentialism is *rule
consequentialism*, which makes the moral rightness of an act
depend on the consequences of a rule (Singer 1961). Since a rule is an
abstract entity, a rule by itself strictly has no consequences. Still,
*obedience rule consequentialists* can ask what would happen if
everybody obeyed a rule or what would happen if everybody violated a
rule. They might argue, for example, that theft is morally wrong
because it would be disastrous if everybody broke a rule against
theft. Often, however, it does not seem morally wrong to break a rule
even though it would cause disaster if everybody broke it. For
example, if everybody broke the rule "Have some children",
then our species would die out, but that hardly shows it is morally
wrong not to have any children. Luckily, our species will not die out
if everyone is permitted not to have children, since enough people
want to have children. Thus, instead of asking, "What would
happen if everybody did that?", rule consequentialists should
ask, "What would happen if everybody were permitted to do
that?" People are permitted to do what violates no accepted
rule, so asking what would happen if everybody were permitted to do an
act is just the flip side of asking what would happen if people
accepted a rule that forbids that act. Such *acceptance rule
consequentialists* then claim that an act is morally wrong if and
only if it violates a rule whose acceptance has better consequences
than the acceptance of any incompatible rule. In some accounts, a rule
is accepted when it is built into individual consciences (Brandt
1992). Other rule utilitarians, however, require that moral rules be
publicly known (Gert 2005; cf. Sinnott-Armstrong 2003b) or built into
public institutions (Rawls 1955). Then they hold what can be called
*public acceptance rule consequentialism*: an act is morally
wrong if and only if it violates a rule whose public acceptance
maximizes the good.



The indirectness of such rule utilitarianism provides a way to remain
consequentialist and yet capture the common moral intuition that it is
immoral to perform the transplant in the above situation. Suppose
people generally accepted a rule that allows a doctor to transplant
organs from a healthy person without consent when the doctor believes
that this transplant will maximize utility. Widely accepting this rule
would lead to many transplants that do not maximize utility, since
doctors (like most people) are prone to errors in predicting
consequences and weighing utilities. Moreover, if the rule is publicly
known, then patients will fear that they might be used as organ
sources, so they would be less likely to go to a doctor when they need
one. The medical profession depends on trust that this public rule
would undermine. For such reasons, some rule utilitarians conclude
that it would not maximize utility for people generally to accept a
rule that allows doctors to transplant organs from unwilling donors.
If this claim is correct, then rule utilitarianism implies that it is
morally wrong for a particular doctor to use an unwilling donor, even
for a particular transplant that would have better consequences than
any alternative even from the doctor's own perspective. Common
moral intuition is thereby preserved.



Rule utilitarianism faces several potential counterexamples (such as
whether public rules allowing slavery could sometimes maximize
utility) and needs to be formulated more precisely (particularly in
order to avoid collapsing into act-utilitarianism; cf. Lyons 1965).
Such details are discussed in another entry in this encyclopedia (see
Hooker on rule-consequentialism). Here I will just point out that
direct consequentialists find it convoluted and implausible to judge a
particular act by the consequences of something else (Smart 1956). Why
should mistakes by other doctors in other cases make this
doctor's act morally wrong, when this doctor knows for sure that
he is not mistaken in this case? Rule consequentialists can respond
that we should not claim special rights or permissions that we are not
willing to grant to every other person, and that it is arrogant to
think we are less prone to mistakes than other people are. However,
this doctor can reply that he is willing to give everyone the right to
violate the usual rules in the rare cases when they do know for sure
that violating those rules really maximizes utility. Anyway, even if
rule utilitarianism accords with some common substantive moral
intuitions, it still seems counterintuitive in other ways. This makes
it worthwhile to consider how direct consequentialists can bring their
views in line with common moral intuitions, and whether they need to
do so.


## 6. Consequences for Whom? Limiting the Demands of Morality



Another popular charge is that classic utilitarianism demands too
much, because it requires us to do acts that are or should be moral
options (neither obligatory nor forbidden). (Scheffler 1982) For
example, imagine that my old shoes are serviceable but dirty, so I
want a new pair of shoes that costs $100. I could wear my old shoes
and give the $100 to a charity that will use my money to save someone
else's life. It would seem to maximize utility for me to give
the $100 to the charity. If it is morally wrong to do anything other
than what maximizes utility, then it is morally wrong for me to buy
the shoes. But buying the shoes does not seem morally wrong. It might
be morally better to give the money to charity, but such contributions
seem supererogatory, that is, above and beyond the call of duty. Of
course, there are many more cases like this. When I watch television,
I always (or almost always) could do more good by helping others, but
it does not seem morally wrong to watch television. When I choose to
teach philosophy rather than working for CARE or the Peace Corps, my
choice probably fails to maximize utility overall. If we were required
to maximize utility, then we would have to make very different choices
in many areas of our lives. The requirement to maximize utility, thus,
strikes many people as too demanding because it interferes with the
personal decisions that most of us feel should be left up to the
individual.



Some utilitarians respond by arguing that we really are morally
required to change our lives so as to do a lot more to increase
overall utility (see Kagan 1989, P. Singer 1993, and Unger 1996). Such
hard-liners claim that most of what most people do is morally wrong,
because most people rarely maximize utility. Some such wrongdoing
might be blameless when agents act from innocent or even desirable
motives, but it is still supposed to be moral wrongdoing. Opponents of
utilitarianism find this claim implausible, but it is not obvious that
their counter-utilitarian intuitions are reliable or well-grounded
(Murphy 2000, chs. 1-4; cf. Mulgan 2001, Singer 2005, Greene
2013).



Other utilitarians blunt the force of the demandingness objection by
limiting direct utilitarianism to what people morally *ought*
to do. Even if we morally ought to maximize utility, it need not be
morally wrong to fail to maximize utility. John Stuart Mill, for
example, argued that an act is morally *wrong* only when both
it fails to maximize utility and its agent is liable to punishment for
the failure (Mill 1861). It does not always maximize utility to punish
people for failing to maximize utility. Thus, on this view, it is not
always morally wrong to fail to do what one morally ought to do. If
Mill is correct about this, then utilitarians can say that we ought to
give much more to charity, but we are not required or obliged to do
so, and failing to do so is not morally wrong (cf. Sinnott-Armstrong
2005).



Many utilitarians still want to avoid the claim that we morally ought
to give so much to charity. One way around this claim uses a
rule-utilitarian theory of what we morally ought to do. If it costs
too much to internalize rules implying that we ought to give so much
to charity, then, according to such rule-utilitarianism, it is not
true that we ought to give so much to charity (Hooker 2000, ch.
8).



Another route follows an agent-relative theory of value. If there is
more value in benefiting oneself or one's family and friends
than there is disvalue in letting strangers die (without killing
them), then spending resources on oneself or one's family and
friends would maximize the good. A problem is that such
consequentialism would seem to imply that we morally ought not to
contribute those resources to charity, although such contributions
seem at least permissible.



More personal leeway could also be allowed by deploying the legal
notion of proximate causation. When a starving stranger would stay
alive if and only if one contributed to a charity, contributing to the
charity still need not be the proximate cause of the stranger's
life, and failing to contribute need not be the proximate cause of his
or her death. Thus, if an act is morally right when it includes the
most net good in its proximate consequences, then it might not be
morally wrong either to contribute to the charity or to fail to do so.
This potential position, as mentioned above, has not yet been
developed, as far as I know.



Yet another way to reach this conclusion is to give up maximization
and to hold instead that we morally ought to do what creates enough
utility. This position is often described as *satisficing
consequentialism* (Slote 1984). According to satisficing
consequentialism, it is not morally wrong to fail to contribute to a
charity if one contributes enough to other charities and if the money
or time that one could contribute does create enough good, so it is
not just wasted. (For criticisms, see Bradley 2006.) A related
position is *progressive consequentialism*, which holds that we
morally ought to improve the world or make it better than it would be
if we did nothing, but we don't have to improve it as much as we
can (Elliot and Jamieson, 2009). Both satisficing and progressive
consequentialism allow us to devote some of our time and money to
personal projects that do not maximize overall good.



A more radical set of proposals confines consequentialism to
judgements about how good an act is on a scale (Norcross 2006, 2020)
or to degrees of wrongness and rightness (Sinhababu 2018). This
positions are usually described as *scalar
consequentialism*. A scalar consequentialist can refuse to say
whether it is absolutely right or wrong to give $1000 to charity, for
example, but still say that giving $1000 to charity is better and more
right than giving only $100 and simultaneously worse and more wrong
than giving $10,000. A related *contrastivist consequentialism*
could say that one ought to give $1000 in contrast with $100 but not
in contrast with $10,000 (cf. Snedegar 2017). Such positions can
also hold that less or less severe negative sanctions are justified
when an agent's act is worse than a smaller set of alternatives
compared to when the agent's act is worse than a larger set of
alternatives. This approach then becomes less demanding, both because
it sees less negative sanctions as justified when the agent fails to
do the best act possible, and also because it avoids saying that
everyday actions are simply wrong without comparison to any set of
alternatives.



Opponents still object that all such consequentialist theories are
misdirected. When I decide to visit a friend instead of working for a
charity, I can know that my act is not immoral even if I have not
calculated that the visit will create enough overall good or that it
will improve the world. These critics hold that friendship requires us
to do certain favors for friends without weighing our friends'
welfare impartially against the welfare of strangers. Similarly, if I
need to choose between saving my drowning wife and saving a drowning
stranger, it would be "one thought too many" (Williams
1981) for me to calculate the consequences of each act. I morally
should save my wife straightaway without calculating utilities.



In response, utilitarians can remind critics that the principle of
utility is intended as only a criterion of right and not as a decision
procedure, so utilitarianism does not imply that people ought to
calculate utilities before acting (Railton 1984). Consequentialists
can also allow the special perspective of a friend or spouse to be
reflected in agent-relative value assessments (Sen 1982, Broome 1991,
Portmore 2001, 2003) or probability assessments (Jackson 1991). It
remains controversial, however, whether any form of consequentialism
can adequately incorporate common moral intuitions about
friendship.


## 7. Arguments for Consequentialism



Even if consequentialists can accommodate or explain away common moral
intuitions, that might seem only to answer objections without yet
giving any positive reason to accept consequentialism. However, most
people begin with the *presumption* that we morally ought to
make the world better when we can. The question then is only whether
any moral constraints or moral options need to be added to the basic
consequentialist factor in moral reasoning. (Kagan 1989, 1998) If no
objection reveals any need for anything beyond consequences, then
consequences alone seem to determine what is morally right or wrong,
just as consequentialists claim.



This line of reasoning will not convince opponents who remain
unsatisfied by consequentialist responses to objections. Moreover,
even if consequentialists do respond adequately to every proposed
objection, that would not show that consequentialism is correct or
even defensible. It might face new problems that nobody has yet
recognized. Even if every possible objection is refuted, we might have
no reason to reject consequentialism but still no reason to accept
it.



In case a positive reason is needed, consequentialists present a wide
variety of arguments. One common move attacks opponents. If the only
plausible options in moral theory lie on a certain list (say,
Kantianism, contractarianism, virtue theory, pluralistic intuitionism,
and consequentialism), then consequentialists can argue for their own
theory by criticizing the others. This *disjunctive syllogism*
or *process of elimination* will be only as strong as the set
of objections to the alternatives, and the argument fails if even one
competitor survives. Moreover, the argument assumes that the original
list is complete. It is hard to see how that assumption could be
justified.



Consequentialism also might be supported by an *inference to the
best explanation* of our moral intuitions. This argument might
surprise those who think of consequentialism as counterintuitive, but
in fact consequentialists can explain many moral intuitions that
trouble deontological theories. Moderate deontologists, for example,
often judge that it is morally wrong to kill one person to save five
but not morally wrong to kill one person to save a million. They never
specify the line between what is morally wrong and what is not morally
wrong, and it is hard to imagine any non-arbitrary way for
deontologists to justify a cutoff point. In contrast,
consequentialists can simply say that the line belongs wherever the
benefits most outweigh the costs, including any bad side effects (cf.
Sinnott-Armstrong 2007). Similarly, when two promises conflict, it
often seems clear which one we should keep, and that intuition can
often be explained by the amount of harm that would be caused by
breaking each promise. In contrast, deontologists are hard pressed to
explain which promise is overriding if the reason to keep each promise
is simply that it was made (Sinnott-Armstrong 2009). If
consequentialists can better explain more common moral intuitions,
then consequentialism might have more explanatory coherence overall,
despite being counterintuitive in some cases. (Compare Sidgwick 1907,
Book IV, Chap. III; and Sverdlik 2011.) And even if act
consequentialists cannot argue in this way, it still might work for
rule consequentialists (such as Hooker 2000).



Consequentialists also might be supported by *deductive*
arguments from abstract moral intuitions. Sidgwick (1907, Book III,
Chap. XIII) seemed to think that the principle of utility follows from
certain very general self-evident principles, including
universalizability (if an act ought to be done, then every other act
that resembles it in all relevant respects also ought to be done),
rationality (one ought to aim at the good generally rather than at any
particular part of the good), and equality ("the good of any one
individual is of no more importance, from the point of view ... of the
Universe, than the good of any other").



Other consequentialists are more skeptical about moral intuitions, so
they seek foundations outside morality, either in non-normative facts
or in non-moral norms. Mill (1861) is infamous for his
"proof" of the principle of utility from empirical
observations about what we desire (cf. Sayre-McCord 2001). In
contrast, Hare (1963, 1981) tries to derive his version of
utilitarianism from substantively neutral accounts of morality, of
moral language, and of rationality (cf. Sinnott-Armstrong 2001).
Similarly, Gewirth (1978) tries to derive his variant of
consequentialism from metaphysical truths about actions.



Yet another argument for a kind of consequentialism is
*contractarian*. Harsanyi (1977, 1978) argues that all
informed, rational people whose impartiality is ensured because they
do not know their place in society would favor a kind of
consequentialism. Broome (1991) elaborates and extends
Harsanyi's argument.



Other forms of arguments have also been invoked on behalf of
consequentialism (e.g. Cummiskey 1996, P. Singer 1993;
Sinnott-Armstrong 1992). However, each of these arguments has also
been subjected to criticisms.



Even if none of these arguments proves consequentialism, there still
might be no adequate reason to deny consequentialism. We might have no
reason either to deny consequentialism or to assert it.
Consequentialism could then remain a live option even if it is not
proven.