This paper explores what a Rule Consequentialist of Brad Hooker's sort can and should say about normative rea- sons for action. I claim that they can provide a theory of reasons, but that doing so requires distinguishing dif- ferent roles of rules in the ideal code. Some rules in the ideal code specify reasons, while others perform differ- ent functions. The paper also discusses a choice that Rule Consequentialists face about how exactly to specify rea- sons. It ends by comparing (...) the theory of reasons offered by Rule Consequentialism with the theory offered by Act Consequentialism, noting that Rule Consequentialism seems better able to explain moral constraints. (shrink)

The absolutist status Mill assigns to his liberty principle (LP) is incompatible with standard utilitarian maximizing reasoning. But LP is compatible with his non-standard utilitarianism, whose extraordinary structure is clarified using a “consequentializing” lens. This involves enlarging outcomes to include not only the downstream consequences of self-regarding actions but also the actions themselves and the agent’s liberty of choosing them using his own agent-relative evaluation criteria. Self-regarding liberty is protected by indefeasible moral right and, according to the higher pleasures doctrine, (...) the moral sentiment of justice has a pleasant quality that is infinitely superior in value as pleasure to any conflicting kinds of pleasure. Infinitesimal value attaches to any pleasures enjoyed by those who wrongfully interfere to compel competent but foolish or reckless agents to take self-regarding actions with the most expedient consequences. Absolute weight is thereby consistently given to LP over all competing considerations in the course of maximizing general happiness in point of quantity and quality. (shrink)

Outcomes tyrannize over prevailing accounts of ethics, actions, reasons, attitudes, and social practices. The right action promotes the best outcome, the end of every action is an outcome to be promoted, reasons to act are reasons to promote outcomes, and preferences and desires rationalize actions that aim at the outcome of realizing their contents—making their contents true. The case for this tyranny turns on a related set of counterintuitive outcome-centered interpretations of deeply intuitive claims that it is always right to (...) do what’s best, that every action brings about an outcome, and that the good is prior to the right. The ethical case for consequentialism elides the distinction between these claims in each case, allowing the counter-intuitive interpretations to hijack the plausibility of the intuitively plausible counterparts. This ethical hijacking has succeeded in large part because a conflation between two different senses of bringing about, and an assumption that all non-deontic value rationales for action are outcome-centered, are thoroughly entrenched at the non-ethical level as well. The “neutral” framework of reasons, actions, and attitudes within which we frame the ethical debate begs the question in favor of a consequentialist resolution of the debate, providing a non-ethical argument for outcome-centered ethics. To expose this conflation and this unwarranted assumption, then, is to undermine the case for these default outcome-centered accounts of reasons, actions, and attitudes as well, and in doing so to expose a subtle but pernicious shift from looking directly at oneself, one’s reasons, the values they reflect, one’s actions, and the practices in which one is involved, to looking at these same things as if in a fun house mirror—the recognizable features are there, but subtly, profoundly distorted, often beyond recognition. (shrink)