How to defend consequentalism?

You can actually come at this from a deontological perspective and say that anything which brings about a positive outcome is not only not self-negating (thus passing one of the criteria for the moral imperative), but also places the outcome before personal feelings about the methods, thus treating each case according to its end and not means (and thus passing another of the criteria for the moral imperative). Deontology and consequentialism meet in existentialism, in which all external authority is disregarded in favour of constructing an entirely internalized morality. Since natural law holds that there is an objectively derivable morality from physical laws, this internal morality – if it’s consistent and logical – must necessarily devolve from natural law. In fact, this process is referred to as “natural justice.”

It seems to me that both premises are vulnerable, so I’m going to recommend two possible courses of argument. The first will be an internal critique (that is, it finds a contradiction between the premise and other things that Nagel believes). The second will be an external critique (that is, it will argue that Nagel is incorrect about what consequentialism permits). I’m also going to give only the outline of the argument.

Against premise #1

Nagel is a strong believer in both moral and political rights. And while he is not an absolutist about rights (he believes we can violate a person’s rights to avoid catastrophic results), he does think that violating someone’s rights requires a very strong justification. As such, he must admit that there are things you cannot compel someone to do even if the person ought to do them. Notice, however, that there is nothing in the last sentence making an exception based on one’s motivation. If I have a right to act in a certain way, and if doing so will not bring about catastrophic results (even if it will not bring about the best possible result), then a rights-based morality must allow me to act as I wish even if I am doing so out of evil intentions.

Consider the following example: Bill hates Jim. One day, Jim’s wife gets sick. The medical costs are exorbitant, and Jim cannot afford them even after selling everything he owns. Out of desperation, Jim starts asking for charitable donations from his friends and neighbors. Bill refuses out of spite. He could easily afford to help Jim, but he wants Jim’s wife to die and for Jim to be left destitute. On a rights-based view like Nagel’s, no one has the right to force Bill to give money to Jim. Thus he must be permitted to refuse Jim’s request for charity. But Bill’s refusal is aimed at evil. Thus Nagel’s view must permit an action that aims at evil. Therefore, Nagel must either abandon his view or abandon premise #1.

Against premise #2

According to the consequentialist, good and evil are entirely defined in terms of outcomes. An action is permitted if it brings about a good outcome and prohibited if it brings about a bad outcome. If an action brings about a good outcome (however that might be defined by the variety of consequentialist in question), then it is necessarily not evil. Thus no action that is permitted by a consequentialist would also be recognized by that consequentialist as evil. All that Nagel could be complaining about, then, is the motivation for the action (the action “aims at evil” only insofar as it was not done because it brought about a good outcome).

This might seem worrisome, but the consequentialist has a response. Though it may be true that a good outcome can be brought about for the wrong reasons, this is neither likely nor common. The unlikelihood doesn’t eliminate the possibility, of course, but it does tell us something about what sort of people the consequentialist thinks we ought to be. Since spiteful people are unlikely to get it right by accident, we ought to—for consequentialist reasons—aspire to the sort of character traits that mitigate and reduce the sorts of motivations that Nagel is worried about. A good consequentialist is indeed worried about motivations because our motivations are an important factor in determining whether or not we act as consequentialism demands. In order to make sure that we achieve the best outcomes realistically possible, people ought to be morally educated in a way that prevents their spite and other negative emotions from overcoming their willingness to do what is best. What would be worrisome is if consequentialism condoned aiming at evil. But it does not. That it may permit them in certain unlikely circumstances does not change the fact that the consequentialist has consequentialist reasons for wanting people to aim at the good for the right reasons.

The advantage of the first argument is that it finds an internal contradiction in Nagel’s own views. The disadvantage is that it leaves him the option of letting his own view go down with the ship so long as it takes consequentialism with it (since nothing about the response actually defends consequentialism; it just finds a partner in guilt). The advantage of the second argument is that it defends consequentialism directly and on its own terms. The disadvantage is that it doesn’t offer anything to someone who isn’t already sympathetic to the underlying claims consequentialism is built upon. In both cases, the advantages they have and the disadvantages they have stem from the type of critique being offered (that is, internal or external).

@SavoirFaire‘s argument against the second premise pretty much nails it. Consequentialism comes with its own definition of good and evil, so the argument becomes one over whose moral criteria are better.

There are more fundamental arguments that could be made against consequentialism.

How do you measure the goodness of different types of acts? How, for example, do you compare freedom and security? How could the abortion issue be decided?

Even if you could find a universal measure of goodness, what would be the best way of aggregating it? Highest total? Highest average? Highest mean? What if these were all in conflict with one another? For example, if we used income as a measure of goodness, average income in the U.S. has been rising but median income has been declining, reflecting the skewing of the economy toward the top 1%. Is that a good thing?

@LostInParadise That’s the difference between natural law and natural justice. The inherent irrationality of language may prevent us from being able to accurately codify natural law, but our inability to translate it into perfect natural justice doesn’t negate natural law itself.

Good discussion, folks. I’m watching from here on the sidelines where I might just learn a thing or two.

So if I understand correctly, deontologists like Nagel appear to judge the “goodness” of an action by the intentions of the actor. There is a strong subjective element here. However consequentialists only judge the goodness of an action by its result, which is an objective standard.

In other words, “an action that aims at evil” is A in the eyes of the consequentalist, and B in the eyes of the deontologist. Does A really refute B?

@sulfurx Nagel certainly wouldn’t say there is anything subjective about his approach. Indeed, he has spent most of his career attempting to defend the idea that there are objective moral values. Intentions come up because they are what determine what an action is aimed at. But Nagel would say what makes something good or bad/right or wrong is ultimately based on pure reason. Kant thinks this, too. The idea is that there are certain basic rules that we (as reasonable beings) cannot consistently deny, and that the rest of morality is built upon these rules.

Kant calls the rational basis of morality the “categorical imperative.” And while the categorical imperative cannot itself be put into words, there are various formulations of it that we can learn and follow. The first and most discussed formulation is the formulation of universal law: “act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.”

So what does that mean? It means that for any action you are thinking of taking, you have to figure out what the general principle behind your action is and then consider a world where everyone always acts on that principle. Is such a world even possible? If such a world is possible, is it logically consistent for someone who acts on that principle to want to live in a world where everyone acts on that principle? If the answer to either of these questions is “no,” then taking the action we are considering is contrary to reason and immoral.

One example that Kant gives is making false promises (that is, promising to do something even though you have no intention of keeping the promise). Now, consider a world where people always broke their promises. In such a world, there would be no such thing as promising because the whole practice of making and accepting promises is built on the edifice of people keeping their promises. Sure, promising can survive some people breaking their promises some of the time. But if nobody ever kept their promises, then the whole practice of promising would die out. So a world in which people always broke their promises is impossible because such a world would not contain any promises to break. Therefore, the action is contrary to reason and immoral.

But what about the second case, when the world is logically possible? One example that Kant uses here is selfishness. It is possible to have a world where everyone acted selfishly all the time. But we cannot consistently will that this be the case because our selfishness is best served by the altruism of others. That is to say, a selfish person ought to want a world in which others are not selfish. So it would be contrary to reason for someone who wanted to act selfishly all the time to wish for a world in which everyone else acted the same way since that would undermine his ability to act selfishly. The wish would be self-defeating. Thus it would be contrary to reason and immoral to act selfishly all he time.

Nagel agrees with this basic strategy of trying to find contradictions in people’s actions, but he also expands on it. One of his well known cases has to do with pain felt by people other than ourselves. We dislike pain and want to avoid it. Why? Because pain is bad. But is it just our pain, or everybody’s pain? Well, we don’t think our pain is bad just because it’s ours. We think it’s bad because it is pain, and pain is awful. It’s the badness of pain itself that makes us want to avoid it. But if we are therefore committed to saying that pain itself is bad, and if other people are similar to us such that they experience pain the same way that we do, then we cannot consistently think that the pain is not bad for them. And again, it’s bad for them because pain itself just is bad. So we should care about the pain of others because it would be contrary to reason to say “pain itself is just bad, but their pain isn’t bad.” Because if pain itself is bad, then it’s bad no matter who is experiencing it.

So in the end, the arguments of Kant and Nagel are supposed to be based on reason, and reason is supposed to be objective. I’m not sure I understand your last question, though. In the arguments I presented above, it’s not about A refuting B so much as Nagel’s argument not being enough to convince a consequentialist. The consequentialist should be unconvinced because in the case of the first premise, Nagel has a rather huge inconsistency to worry about (since his argument seems to prove too much—it works just as well against his own view as it does against consequentialism); and in the case of the second premise, Nagel has failed to engage the consequentialist on his own terms (and thus has made accusations regarding the view that a committed consequentialist has no reason to accept as valid).