Negative consequentialism

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Negative consequentialism is a version of consequentialism, which is "one of the major theories of normative ethics." [1] Like other versions of consequentialism, negative consequentialism holds that moral right and wrong depend only on the value of outcomes. [2] That is, for negative and other versions of consequentialism, questions such as "what should I do?" and "what kind of person should I be?" are answered only based on consequences. Negative consequentialism differs from other versions of consequentialism by giving greater weight in moral deliberations to what is bad (e.g. suffering or injustice) than what is good (e.g. happiness or justice). [3] Due to this, it can be considered an instance of what has been called "suffering-focused ethics", the view that the reduction of suffering has moral priority over any other possible duties we may think of. [4] [5]

Contents

Negative Utilitarianism

A specific type of consequentialism is utilitarianism, which says that the consequences that matter are those that affect aggregate well-being. [6] Consequentialism is broader than utilitarianism in that consequentialism can say that the value of outcomes depend on other things than well-being; for example, justice, fairness, and equality, [7] or in that it can say that the value of outcomes depend on well-being but not necessarily aggregate well-being (as it happens, for instance, with prioritarianism, which promotes achieving the higher level of happiness minus suffering but giving priority to the well-being of the worse off). [8] Negative utilitarianism is thus a form of negative consequentialism. [9] Much more has been written explicitly about negative utilitarianism than directly about negative consequentialism, although since negative utilitarianism is a form of negative consequentialism, everything that has been written about negative utilitarianism is by definition about a specific (utilitarian) version of negative consequentialism. Similarly to how there are many variations of consequentialism and negative utilitarianism, there are many versions of negative consequentialism, for example negative prioritarianism and negative consequentialist egalitarianism. [10]

People

G. E. Moore's ethics can be said to be a negative consequentialism (more precisely, a consequentialism with a negative utilitarian component), because he has been labeled a consequentialist, [11] and he said that "consciousness of intense pain is, by itself, a great evil" [12] whereas "the mere consciousness of pleasure, however intense, does not, by itself, appear to be a great good, even if it has some slight intrinsic value. In short, pain (if we understand by this expression, the consciousness of pain) appears to be a far worse evil than pleasure is a good." [13] Moore wrote in the first half of the 20th century before any of the terms 'consequentialism,' 'negative utilitarianism' or 'negative consequentialism' were coined, and he did not use the term 'negative consequentialism' himself. [14] Similarly to Moore, Ingemar Hedenius defended a consequentialism that could be called negative (or could be said to have a negative utilitarian component) because he assigned more importance to suffering than to happiness. Hedenius saw the worst in life, such as infernalistic suffering, as so evil that calculations of happiness versus suffering become unnecessary; he did not see that such evil could be counterbalanced by any good, such as happiness. [15]

Apologists

Philosophy professor Clark Wolf defends "negative consequentialism as a component of a larger theory of justice." [16] Walter Sinnott-Armstrong interprets Bernard Gert's moral system as a "sophisticated form of negative objective universal public rule consequentialism." [17] Jamie Mayerfeld argues for a strong duty to relieve suffering, which can be consequentialist in form. [18] He says that "suffering is more bad than happiness is good," [19] and that "the lifelong bliss of many people, no matter how many, cannot justify our allowing the lifelong torture of one." [20] Accordingly to this, the ultimate goal of negative consequentialism would then be the eradication of suffering [21]

Negative consequentialism has also been defended by claiming that it is the best solution to the asymmetry in population ethics, which consists in the fact that most of us have the intuition that it is wrong to create an unhappy life but not necessarily wrong not to create a happy life. [22]

See also

Citations

  1. ↑ Peterson 2013 , p. vii: "Consequentialism is one of the major theories of normative ethics".
  2. ↑ Bykvist 2009 , p. 19: "The whole family of utilitarian theories is captured by the equation: Utilitarianism = Consequentialism (nothing but the values of outcomes matter for the rightness of actions) + Welfarism (nothing but well-being matters for the value of outcomes)."
  3. ↑ Arrhenius & Bykvist 1995 , p. 115: “Our point of departure was the firm intuition that unhappiness and suffering have greater weight than happiness. By taking this stand we revealed ourselves as members of the negative utilitarian family.” Ord 2013: “NU [negative utilitarianism] comes in several flavours, which I will outline later, but the basic thrust is that an act is morally right if and only if it leads to less suffering than any available alternative. Unlike Classical Utilitarianism, positive experiences such as pleasure or happiness are either given no weight, or at least a lot less weight. (In what follows, I use the word 'happiness' to stand in for whatever aspects of life might be thought to have positive value).”
  4. ↑ Gloor, L. (2019) "The case for suffering-focused ethics", Center on Long-Term Risk.
  5. ↑ Vinding, Magnus (2020). Suffering-Focused Ethics: Defense and Implications. Copenhagen: Ratio Ethica.
  6. ↑ Bykvist 2009, p. 19.
  7. ↑ Hooker, Mason & Miller 2000 , p. 2: “Other consequentialist theories take other things to be valuable, for example justice, fairness, and equality.”
  8. ↑ Parfit 1995 , p. 19–22
  9. ↑ “One form of negative consequentialism is negative utilitarianism”. Animal Ethics (2014) "Negative Consequentialism", Ethics and Animals
  10. ↑ “According to negative consequentialism such as negative prioritarianism, negative utilitarianism, and negative consequentialist egalitarianism...”Animal Ethics (2014) "Negative Consequentialism", Ethics and Animals
  11. ↑ Shaw 1995 , p. 46: “Moore is indeed a consequentialist.”
  12. ↑ Moore 1951, p. 213.
  13. ↑ Moore 1951, p. 212.
  14. ↑ Moore died in 1958; the same year that both of the terms 'consequentialism' and 'negative utilitarianism' seem to have been coined. According to Spielthenner 2005 , p. 231, "It seems that the term 'consequentialism' has been coined by E. Anscombe in her influential article 'Modern Moral Philosophy' (1958)." Smart 1958 is widely considered to have coined the term 'negative utilitarianism.'
  15. ↑ Petersson 2009.
  16. ↑ Wolf 2009 , p. 360: "For a defence of a negative consequentialism as a component of a larger theory of justice, see Wolf (1999)." That is, see Wolf 1999.
  17. ↑ Sinnott-Armstrong 2002, p. 147.
  18. ↑ Mayerfeld 1999 , p. 116: "The duty to relieve suffering, I have suggested, arises from the badness of suffering." Mayerfeld 1999 , p. 117: "The duty to relieve suffering is consequentialist in form."
  19. ↑ Mayerfeld 1999, p. 136.
  20. ↑ Mayerfeld 1999, p. 178.
  21. ↑ Pearce, David (2017). Can Biotechnology Abolish Suffering? North Carolina: The Neuroethics Foundation. ISBN   9781386842149.
  22. ↑ McMahan, Jeff (2009). "Asymmetries in the Morality of Causing People to Exist". In Melinda A. Roberts and David T. Wasserman, eds., Harming Future Persons. Netherlands: Springer. pp. 49–68.

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Applied ethics refers to the practical aspect of moral considerations. It is ethics with respect to real-world actions and their moral considerations in the areas of private and public life, the professions, health, technology, law, and leadership. For example, the bioethics community is concerned with identifying the correct approach to moral issues in the life sciences, such as euthanasia, the allocation of scarce health resources, or the use of human embryos in research. Environmental ethics is concerned with ecological issues such as the responsibility of government and corporations to clean up pollution. Business ethics includes questions regarding the duties or duty of 'whistleblowers' to the general public or their loyalty to their employers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Consequentialism</span> Ethical theory based on consequences

In ethical philosophy, consequentialism is a class of normative, teleological ethical theories that holds that the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for judgment about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct. Thus, from a consequentialist standpoint, a morally right act is one that will produce a good outcome. Consequentialism, along with eudaimonism, falls under the broader category of teleological ethics, a group of views which claim that the moral value of any act consists in its tendency to produce things of intrinsic value. Consequentialists hold in general that an act is right if and only if the act will produce, will probably produce, or is intended to produce, a greater balance of good over evil than any available alternative. Different consequentialist theories differ in how they define moral goods, with chief candidates including pleasure, the absence of pain, the satisfaction of one's preferences, and broader notions of the "general good".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ethics</span> Branch of philosophy concerning right and wrong conduct

Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior". The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns matters of value; these fields comprise the branch of philosophy called axiology.

Hedonism refers to a family of theories, all of which have in common that pleasure plays a central role in them. Psychological or motivational hedonism claims that human behavior is determined by desires to increase pleasure and to decrease pain. Normative or ethical hedonism, on the other hand, is not about how humans actually act but how humans should act: people should pursue pleasure and avoid pain. Axiological hedonism, which is sometimes treated as a part of ethical hedonism, is the thesis that only pleasure has intrinsic value. Applied to well-being or what is good for someone, it is the thesis that pleasure and suffering are the only components of well-being. These technical definitions of hedonism within philosophy, which are usually seen as respectable schools of thought, have to be distinguished from how the term is used in "everyday language". In that sense, it has a negative connotation, linked to the egoistic pursuit of short-term gratification by indulging in sensory pleasures without regard for the consequences.

Normative ethics is the study of ethical behaviour and is the branch of philosophical ethics that investigates the questions that arise regarding how one ought to act, in a moral sense.

In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for all affected individuals.

This Index of ethics articles puts articles relevant to well-known ethical debates and decisions in one place - including practical problems long known in philosophy, and the more abstract subjects in law, politics, and some professions and sciences. It lists also those core concepts essential to understanding ethics as applied in various religions, some movements derived from religions, and religions discussed as if they were a theory of ethics making no special claim to divine status.

In ethics, welfarism is a theory that well-being, what is good for someone or what makes a life worth living, is the only thing that has intrinsic value. In its most general sense, it can be defined as descriptive theory about what has value, but some philosophers also understand welfarism as a moral theory, that what one should do is ultimately determined by considerations of well-being. The right action, policy or rule is the one leading to the maximal amount of well-being. In this sense, it is often seen as a type of consequentialism, and can take the form of utilitarianism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bernard Gert</span>

Bernard Gert was a moral philosopher known primarily for his work in normative ethics, as well as in medical ethics, especially pertaining to psychology.

<i>Utilitarianism</i> (book) 1861 essay by John Stuart Mill

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Act utilitarianism is a utilitarian theory of ethics that states that a person's act is morally right if and only if it produces the best possible results in that specific situation. Classical utilitarians, including Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Henry Sidgwick, define happiness as pleasure and the absence of pain.

Two-level utilitarianism is a utilitarian theory of ethics developed by R. M. Hare. According to the theory, a person's moral decisions should be based on a set of moral rules, except in certain rare situations where it is more appropriate to engage in a 'critical' level of moral reasoning.

Average and total utilitarianism are variants of utilitarianism that seek to maximize the average or total amount of utility; following Henry Sidgwick's question, "Is it total or average happiness that we seek to make a maximum?". They are theories of population ethics, a philosophical field that deals with problems arising when our actions affect the number or identity of individuals born in the future.

The demandingness objection is a common argument raised against utilitarianism and other consequentialist ethical theories. The consequentialist requirement that we maximize the good impartially seems to this objection to require us to perform acts that we would normally consider optional.

State consequentialism, also known as Mohist consequentialism, is a consequentialist ethical theory which evaluates the moral worth of an action based on how it contributes to the basic goods of a state, through social order, material wealth, and population growth. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Mohist consequentialism, dating back to the 5th century BC, is the "world's earliest form of consequentialism, a remarkably sophisticated version based on a plurality of intrinsic goods taken as constitutive of human welfare". The term state consequentialism has also been applied to the political philosophy of the Confucian philosopher Xunzi.

Negative utilitarianism is a form of negative consequentialism that can be described as the view that people should minimize the total amount of aggregate suffering, or that they should minimize suffering and then, secondarily, maximize the total amount of happiness. It can be considered as a version of utilitarianism that gives greater priority to reducing suffering than to increasing pleasure. This differs from classical utilitarianism, which does not claim that reducing suffering is intrinsically more important than increasing happiness. Both versions of utilitarianism hold that morally right and morally wrong actions depend solely on the consequences for overall aggregate well-being. 'Well-being' refers to the state of the individual.

A person-affecting or person-based view in population ethics captures the intuition that an act can only be bad if it is bad for someone. Similarly something can be good only if it is good for someone. Therefore, according to standard person-affecting views, there is no moral obligation to create people nor moral good in creating people because nonexistence means "there is never a person who could have benefited from being created". Whether one accepts person-affecting views greatly influences to what extent shaping the far future is important if there are more potential humans in the future. Person-affecting views are also important in considering human population control.

The Asymmetry, also known as 'the Procreation Asymmetry', is the idea in population ethics that there is a moral or evaluative asymmetry between bringing into existence individuals with good or bad lives. It was first discussed by Jan Narveson in 1967, and Jeff McMahan coined the term 'the Asymmetry' in 1981. McMahan formulates the Asymmetry as follows: "while the fact that a person's life would be worse than no life at all ... constitutes a strong moral reason for not bringing him into existence, the fact that a person's life would be worth living provides no moral reason for bringing him into existence." Professor Nils Holtug formulates the Asymmetry evaluatively in terms of the value of outcomes instead of in terms of moral reasons. Holtug's formulation says that "while it detracts from the value of an outcome to add individuals whose lives are of overall negative value, it does not increase the value of an outcome to add individuals whose lives are of overall positive value."

Suffering-focused ethics are those positions in ethics that give moral priority to the reduction of suffering. This means that they give greater weight to the reduction of suffering than to the promotion of pleasure, happiness, or to other things that one might consider valuable. According to some suffering-focused ethics, humans should concentrate exclusively on reducing preventable suffering. Other views can include additional features, such as the prevention of other disvalues or the promotion of other positive values, while giving priority to reducing preventable suffering over them.

References

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