According to rule-consequentialism’s moral criterion, a given action is morally right if and only if it complies with an ideal code of rules, regardless of the consequences of that action. Rules are to be assessed by their consequences, not actions. This being so, one of the many accusations that have been made against rule-consequentialism is that it can turn suboptimal decisions into morally right decisions and optimal decisions into morally wrong decisions. After all, in certain circumstances, a rule that has (...) the best consequences overall can require an action that does less good or forbid an action that does more good. This is the core of the original rule-worship objection. However, recently, different versions of rule-consequentialism have been developed in order to address that challenge. This paper focuses on three of them, those offered by Brad Hooker, Susan Wolf, and David Copp. My claim is that their arguments, however ingenious, are unsuccessful, because they are innocuous if the charge is reformulated as it should be. (shrink)

As an indirect ethical theory, rule consequentialism first evaluates moral codes in terms of how good the consequences of their general adoption are and then individual actions in terms of whether or not the optimific code authorises them. There are three well-known and powerful objections to rule consequentialism’s indirect structure: the ideal world objection, the rule worship objection, and the incoherence objection. These objections are all based on cases in which following the optimific code has suboptimal consequences in the real (...) world. After outlining the traditional objections and the cases used to support them, this paper first constructs a new hybrid version of consequentialism that combines elements of both act and rule consequentialism. It then argues that this novel view has sufficient resources for responding to the previous traditional objections to pure rule consequentialism. (shrink)

What is the connection between moral rights and the good? While familiar normative theories give justificatory precedence to one notion over the other, this paper explores a neglected alternative: when properly specified, the notion of moral rights and of the good conceptually depend on each other.1.

The ethics of social consequences is a means of satisficing non-utilitarian consequentialism that can be used to approach disaster issues. The primary values in the ethics of social consequences are humanity, human dignity and moral rights, and these are developed and realized to achieve positive social consequences. The secondary values found in the ethics of social consequences include justice, responsibility, moral duty and tolerance. Their role and purpose is given by their ability to help achieve and realize moral good. Fair (...) treatment within moral issues stems from applying primary as well as secondary values. The nature of these values cannot be determined exclusively in ordinary circumstances. However, in extraordinary circumstances (disasters), not all the requirements relating to the value structure of the ethics of social consequences need be considered in its entirety. In extraordinary circumstances, values are prioritised and realized. Primary values are realized prior to secondary ones. When prioritizing primary values, the realization of positive social consequences, or at least minimizing the negative social consequences, takes priority over other primary values. In disaster bioethics especially, it is often necessary to find a way to minimize the negative social consequences; thus, actions where positive social consequences are prevalent are preferred. (shrink)

This essay addresses the collapse/incoherence problem for normative frameworks that contain both fundamental values and rules for promoting those values. The problem is that in some cases, we would bring about more of the fundamental value by violating the framework’s rules than by following them. In such cases, if the framework requires us to follow the rules anyway, then it appears to be incoherent; but if it allows us to make exceptions to the rules, then the framework “collapses” into one (...) that doesn’t make use of rules in the first place. The chapter begins with an examination of happiness and truth as fundamental values in Mill’s work, which lead into parallel versions of the collapse/incoherence problem in ethics and epistemology. It then sets out the collapse problem for rule-consequentialist approaches in ethics, truth-directed accounts of justification in epistemology, and epistemological approaches to argument cogency. The chapter closes with discussion of two potential solutions to the problem. (shrink)

This paper develops an argument that, if rule consequentialism is true, it’s not possible to defend it as the outcome of reflective equilibrium. Ordinary agents like you and me are ignorant of too many empirical facts. Our ignorance is a defeater for our moral intuitions. Even worse, there aren’t enough undefeated intuitions left to defend rule consequentialism. The problem I’ll describe won’t be specific to rule consequentialists, but it will be especially sharp for them.

For a long time many philosophers felt the incoherence objection was a decisive objection to rule-consequentialism, but that position has recently become less secure, because Brad Hooker has offered a clever new way for rule-consequentialists to avoid the incoherence objection. Hooker’s response defeats traditional forms of the incoherence objection, but this paper argues that another version of the problem remains. Several possible solutions fail. One other does not, but it introduces other problems into the theory. I conclude that the new (...) incoherence objection still poses a major challenge to rule-consequentialism, though not for the reasons usually assumed. It does not constitute a fatal objection to rule-consequentialism but instead highlights a theoretical drawback in the theory which must be taken into account during a more holistic evaluation of rule-consequentialism and its rivals. (shrink)

I argue that it is morally wrong for a lawyer to pursue a legal outcome that he knows to be unjust, such as the acquittal of a guilty client or the triumph of the wrong side in a lawsuit.

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, Volume 21, Issue 2, Page 122-164, May 2022. I argue that the consensus view that one must never level down to equality gives rise to a dilemma. This dilemma is best understood by examining two parallel cases of leveling down: one drawn from the economic domain, the other from the political. In the economic case, both egalitarians and non-egalitarians have resisted the idea of leveling down wages to equality. With no incentives for some people to work (...) hard social productivity will likely decline, further lowering people's wages and thus leaving everybody all-things-considered worse off as a result—hence “never level down.” On the other hand, however, the argument against leveling down does not appear to pass muster in the political sphere: denying political equality in the form of “one person, one vote”, for example, by giving a higher share of voting power to people with, say, more education seems straightforwardly objectionable, even if such a voting scheme would improve the outcomes of all people, including those who are ultimately left with fewer votes. Thus, a fundamental tension arises: we can either endorse the widely-affirmed “never-level-down” thesis, which says that sacrificing people's well-being exclusively for the sake of promoting equality can never be the right thing to do, or we can endorse the principle of “one person, one vote.” But we cannot do both. I defend this dilemma against a view I call the compatibility view: roughly, that because OPOV is strictly necessary to advance some weighty, non-egalitarian interest people have, accepting OPOV as a principle of justice is compatible with one's rejection of leveling down. (shrink)

The situationist challenge to global character traits claims that on the basis of findings in social psychology, we should only accept at most the existence of local or context-sensitive traits. In this article I explore a neglected area of J. S. Mill's work to outline an account of context-sensitive traits. This account of traits, coupled with a sophisticated consequentialist ethical framework, suggests an interesting view on which persons govern the circumstances of their actions in order to best promote overall well-being.