Title: Can Consequentialization Advance the Cause of Consequentialism
Abstract: “Can Consequentialization Advance the Cause of Consequentialism?” Benjamin Sachs National Institutes of Health Abstract Recent work on consequentialism has revealed that theory to be more flexible than previously thought. Consequentialists have shown how their theory can accommodate intuitions about the value of other things besides happiness, the agent-centeredness of some constraints, and the importance of how value is distributed. This is usually thought to be of great benefit for consequentialism. I want to cast doubt on this assumption. I begin by putting forward the strongest possible statement of consequentialism’s flexibility—the claim that, whatever set of intuitions our best non-consequentialist theory accommodates, we will be able to construct a consequentialist theory that can do the same while still retaining the virtues of consequentialism. (This process is called consequentialization.) I then argue that if this is true then most likely the non-consequentialist theory with which we started will have the virtues of consequentialism. So while consequentialization makes consequentialism more appealing, it makes non- consequentialism more appealing too. I. Introduction Several authors have argued that the case-specific judgments generated by any non- consequentialist normative ethical theory can be delivered in a consequentialist framework.
Publication Year: 2008
Publication Date: 2008-08-21
Language: en
Type: article
Access and Citation
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot