Card 3.2.1 · Root III — Ethics and Axiology
Consequence-Based Approaches
If an act produces the best outcome, can it be wrong?
Consequentialism holds that an act's rightness depends entirely on its outcomes — nothing about the act itself matters except what it brings about.
On this card
Where it sits
Under 3.2 Normative ethics. Borders 3.5 Value theory, 6.5 Philosophy of economics.
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The rival answers
| Variant | Claim |
|---|---|
| Act utilitarianism | Each act judged by its own outcomes |
| Rule utilitarianism | Follow rules whose general adoption maximises good |
| Negative utilitarianism | Minimise suffering rather than maximise wellbeing |
| Preference utilitarianism | Maximise satisfied preferences, not felt pleasure |
| Mohist consequentialism | Judge by impartial benefit to all, tested against effects |
| Motive consequentialism | Assess motives by the outcomes of having them |
Where do you stand?
If an act produces the best outcome, can it be wrong?
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Key figures
| Figure | Dates | Tradition | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mozi | c. 470–391 BCE | Chinese | Impartial benefit; an early systematic consequentialism |
| Jeremy Bentham | 1748–1832 | European modern | The felicific calculus |
| J. S. Mill | 1806–1873 | European modern | Higher and lower pleasures; a reply to the pig objection |
| Henry Sidgwick | 1838–1900 | European modern | A systematic formulation, with the unresolved dualism of practical reason |
| Peter Singer | b. 1946 | Analytic | Applied consequentialism; expanding the moral circle |
| Bernard Williams | 1929–2003 | Analytic | The integrity objection |
Talk about it here
Conversations about this question in Moral theories:
- The buyer at the gate offers more than the cooperative: does a promise bind when breaking it pays? 6 replies
- Reading group: Kant’s Groundwork, Section I, the good will and the honest shopkeeper 6 replies
- Reading group: Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (1982), read forty years on 6 replies
- The crane logs were falsified and reporting them might shut the terminal: what each theory told me 6 replies
- Williams’s integrity objection, not the arithmetic, is the deepest problem for utilitarianism 6 replies
Join free to ask about it Everything in Moral theories
Connections
→ 3.2 · ↔ 3.5, 3.3.2, 6.5, 3.2.2 · ◇ act utilitarianism, rule utilitarianism, negative utilitarianism, Mohism · ○ Axial Age; Early modern; Modern; Table 5
→ depends on · ↔ borders: genuine overlap, neither prior · ◇ answered by: points from question to answers · ○ appears in: points to the timeline and the comparisons
The full card is in the book
In The Coordinates of Thought this card goes on to a worked example that sets the answers against one case, and to where the question touches daily life — page 142.