Consequentialism, as its name suggests, is simply the view thatnormative properties depend only on consequences. This historicallyimportant and still popular theory embodies the basic intuition thatwhat is best or right is whatever makes the world best in the future,because we cannot change the past, so worrying about the past is nomore useful than crying over spilled milk. This general approach canbe applied at different levels to different normative properties ofdifferent kinds of things, but the most prominent example is probablyconsequentialism about the moral rightness of acts, which holds thatwhether an act is morally right depends only on the consequences ofthat act or of something related to that act, such as the motivebehind the act or a general rule requiring acts of the same kind.

• 1. Classic Utilitarianism
• 2. What is Consequentialism?
• 3. What is Good? Hedonistic vs. Pluralistic Consequentialisms
• 4. Which Consequences? Actual vs. Expected Consequentialisms
• 5. Consequences of What? Rights, Relativity, and Rules
• 6. Consequences for Whom? Limiting the Demands of Morality
• 7. Arguments for Consequentialism
• Bibliography
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Classic Utilitarianism

The paradigm case of consequentialism is utilitarianism, whose classicproponents were Jeremy Bentham (1789), John Stuart Mill (1861), andHenry Sidgwick (1907). (For predecessors, see Schneewind 1997, 2002.)Classic utilitarians held hedonistic act consequentialism.Actconsequentialism is the claim that an act is morally right if andonly if that act maximizes the good, that is, if and only if the totalamount of good for all minus the total amount of bad for all isgreater than this net amount for any incompatible act available to theagent on that occasion. (Cf. Moore 1912, chs. 1–2.)Hedonism then claims that pleasure is the only intrinsic goodand that pain is the only intrinsic bad.

These claims are often summarized in the slogan that an act is rightif and only if it causes “the greatest happiness for thegreatest number.” This slogan is misleading, however. An act canincrease happiness for most (the greatest number of) people but stillfail to maximize the net good in the world if the smaller number ofpeople whose happiness is not increased lose much more than thegreater number gains. The principle of utility would not allow thatkind of sacrifice of the smaller number to the greater number unlessthe net good overall is increased more than any alternative.

Classic utilitarianism is consequentialist as opposed to deontologicalbecause of what it denies. It denies that moral rightness dependsdirectly on anything other than consequences, such as whether theagent promised in the past to do the act now. Of course, the fact thatthe agent promised to do the act might indirectly affect theact’s consequences if breaking the promise will make otherpeople unhappy. Nonetheless, according to classic utilitarianism, whatmakes it morally wrong to break the promise is its future effects onthose other people rather than the fact that the agent promised in thepast (Sinnott-Armstrong 2009).

Since classic utilitarianism reduces all morally relevant factors(Kagan 1998, 17–22) to consequences, it might appear simple.However, classic utilitarianism is actually a complex combination ofmany distinct claims, including the following claims about the moralrightness of acts:

Consequentialism = whether an act is morally right depends only onconsequences (as opposed to the circumstances or theintrinsic nature of the act or anything that happens before theact).

Actual Consequentialism = whether an act is morally right depends onlyon theactual consequences (as opposed to foreseen,foreseeable, intended, or likely consequences).

Direct Consequentialism = whether an act is morally right depends onlyon the consequences ofthat act itself (as opposed to theconsequences of the agent’s motive, of a rule or practice thatcovers other acts of the same kind, and so on).

Evaluative Consequentialism = moral rightness depends only on thevalue of the consequences (as opposed to non-evaluativefeatures of the consequences).

Hedonism = the value of the consequences depends only on thepleasures andpains in the consequences (as opposedto other supposed goods, such as freedom, knowledge, life, and soon).

Maximizing Consequentialism = moral rightness depends only on whichconsequences arebest (as opposed to merely satisfactory oran improvement over the status quo).

Aggregative Consequentialism = which consequences are best is somefunction of the values ofparts of those consequences (asopposed to rankings of whole worlds or sets of consequences).

Total Consequentialism = moral rightness depends only on thetotal net good in the consequences (as opposed to the averagenet good per person).

Universal Consequentialism = moral rightness depends on theconsequences forall people or sentient beings (as opposed toonly the individual agent, members of the individual’s society,present people, or any other limited group).

Equal Consideration = in determining moral rightness, benefits to oneperson matterjust as much as similar benefits to any otherperson (as opposed to putting more weight on the worse or worstoff).

Agent-neutrality = whether some consequences are better than othersdoes not depend on whether the consequences are evaluated from theperspective of the agent (as opposed to an observer).

These claims could be clarified, supplemented, and subdivided further.What matters here is just that most pairs of these claims arelogically independent, so a moral theorist could consistently acceptsome of them without accepting others. Yet classic utilitariansaccepted them all. That fact makes classic utilitarianism a morecomplex theory than it might appear at first sight.

It also makes classic utilitarianism subject to attack from manyangles. Persistent opponents posed plenty of problems for classicutilitarianism. Each objection led some utilitarians to give up someof the original claims of classic utilitarianism. By dropping one ormore of those claims, descendants of utilitarianism can construct awide variety of moral theories. Advocates of these theories often callthem consequentialism rather than utilitarianism so that theirtheories will not be subject to refutation by association with theclassic utilitarian theory.

2. What is Consequentialism?

This array of alternatives raises the question of which moral theoriescount as consequentialist (as opposed to deontological) and why. Inactual usage, the term “consequentialism” seems to be usedas a family resemblance term to refer to any descendant of classicutilitarianism that remains close enough to its ancestor in theimportant respects. Of course, different philosophers see differentrespects as the important ones (Portmore 2020). Hence, there is noagreement on which theories count as consequentialist under thisdefinition.

To resolve this vagueness, we need to determine which of the variousclaims of classic utilitarianism are essential to consequentialism.One claim seems clearly necessary. Any consequentialist theory mustaccept the claim that I labeled “consequentialism”,namely, that certain normative properties depend only on consequences.If that claim is dropped, the theory ceases to beconsequentialist.

It is less clear whether that claim by itself is sufficient to make atheory consequentialist. Several philosophers assert that a moraltheory should not be classified as consequentialist unless it isagent-neutral (McNaughton and Rawling 1991, Howard-Snyder 1994, Pettit1997). This narrower definition is motivated by the fact that manyself-styled critics of consequentialism argue againstagent-neutrality.

Other philosophers prefer a broader definition that does not require amoral theory to be agent-neutral in order to be consequentialist(Bennett 1989; Broome 1991, 5–6; and Skorupski 1995). Criticismsof agent-neutrality can then be understood as directed against onepart of classic utilitarianism that need not be adopted by every moraltheory that is consequentialist. Moreover, according to those whoprefer a broader definition of consequentialism, the narrowerdefinition conflates independent claims and obscures a crucialcommonality between agent-neutral consequentialism and other moraltheories that focus exclusively on consequences, such as moral egoismand recent self-styled consequentialists who allow agent-relativityinto their theories of value (Sen 1982, Broome 1991, Portmore 2001,2003, 2011).

A definition solely in terms of consequences might seem too broad,because it includes absurd theories such as the theory that an act ismorally right if it increases the number of goats in Texas. Of course,such theories are implausible. Still, it is not implausible to callthem consequentialist, since they do look only at consequences. Theimplausibility of one version of consequentialism does not makeconsequentialism implausible in general, since other versions ofconsequentialism still might be plausible.

Besides, anyone who wants to pick out a smaller set of moral theoriesthat excludes this absurd theory may talk about evaluativeconsequentialism, which is the claim that moral rightness depends onlyon the value of the consequences. Then those who want to talk aboutthe even smaller group of moral theories that accepts both evaluativeconsequentialism and agent-neutrality may describe them asagent-neutral evaluative consequentialism. If anyone still insists oncalling these smaller groups of theories by the simple name,‘consequentialism’, this narrower word usage will notaffect any substantive issue.

Still, if the definition of consequentialism becomes too broad, itmight seem to lose force. Some philosophers have argued that any moraltheory, or at least any plausible moral theory, could be representedas a version of consequentialism (Sosa 1993, Portmore 2009, Dreier1993 and 2011; but see Brown 2011). If so, then it means little tolabel a theory as consequentialist. The real content comes only bycontrasting theories that are not consequentialist.

In the end, what matters is only that we get clear about whichtheories a particular commentator counts as consequentialist or notand which claims are supposed to make them consequentialist or not.Only then can we know which claims are at stake when this commentatorsupports or criticizes what they call “consequentialism”.Then we can ask whether each objection really refutes that particularclaim.

3. What is Good? Hedonistic vs. Pluralistic Consequentialisms

Some moral theorists seek a single simple basic principle because theyassume that simplicity is needed in order to decide what is right whenless basic principles or reasons conflict. This assumption seems tomake hedonism attractive. Unfortunately, however, hedonism is not assimple as they assume, because hedonists count both pleasures andpains. Pleasure is distinct from the absence of pain, and pain isdistinct from the absence of pleasure, since sometimes people feelneither pleasure nor pain, and sometimes they feel both at once.Nonetheless, hedonism was adopted partly because it seemed simplerthan competing views.

The simplicity of hedonism was also a source of opposition. From thestart, the hedonism in classic utilitarianism was treated withcontempt. Some contemporaries of Bentham and Mill argued that hedonismlowers the value of human life to the level of animals, because itimplies that, as Bentham said, an unsophisticated game (such aspush-pin) is as good as highly intellectual poetry if the game createsas much pleasure (Bentham 1843).Quantitative hedonistssometimes respond that great poetry almost always creates morepleasure than trivial games (or sex and drugs and rock-and-roll),because the pleasures of poetry are more certain (or probable),durable (or lasting), fecund (likely to lead to other pleasures), pure(unlikely to lead to pains), and so on.

Mill used a different strategy to avoid calling push-pin as good aspoetry. He distinguished higher and lower qualities of pleasuresaccording to the preferences of people who have experienced both kinds(Mill 1861, 56; compare Plato 1993 and Hutcheson 1755, 421–23).Thisqualitative hedonism has been subjected to muchcriticism, including charges that it is incoherent and does not countas hedonism (Moore 1903, 80–81; cf. Feldman 1997,106–24).

Even if qualitative hedonism is coherent and is a kind of hedonism, itstill might not seem plausible. Some critics argue that notall pleasures are valuable, since, for example, there is novalue in the pleasures that a sadist gets from whipping a victim orthat an addict gets from drugs. Other opponents object that notonly pleasures are intrinsically valuable, because otherthings are valuable independently of whether they lead to pleasure oravoid pain. For example, my love for my wife does not seem to becomeless valuable when I get less pleasure from her because she contractssome horrible disease. Similarly, freedom seems valuable even when itcreates anxiety, and even when it is freedom to do something (such asleave one’s country) that one does not want to do. Again, manypeople value knowledge of distant galaxies regardless of whether thisknowledge will create pleasure or avoid pain.

These points against hedonism are often supplemented with the story ofthe experience machine found in Nozick 1974 (42–45; cf. DeBrigard 2010) and the movie,The Matrix. People on thismachinebelieve they are spending time with their friends,winning Olympic gold medals and Nobel prizes, having sex with theirfavorite lovers, or doing whatever gives them the greatest balance ofpleasure over pain. Although they have no real friends or lovers andactually accomplish nothing, people on the experience machine get justas much pleasure as if their beliefs were true. Moreover, they feel no(or little) pain. Assuming that the machine is reliable, it would seemirrational not to hook oneself up to this machineif pleasureand pain were all that mattered, as hedonists claim. Since it doesnot seem irrational to refuse to hook oneself up to thismachine, hedonism seems inadequate. The reason is that hedonismoverlooks the value ofreal friendship, knowledge, freedom,and achievements, all of which are lacking for deluded people on theexperience machine.

Some hedonists claim that this objection rests on a misinterpretationof hedonism. If hedonists see pleasure and pain assensations, then a machine might be able to reproduce thosesensations. However, we can also say that a mother is pleased that herdaughter gets good grades. Suchpropositional pleasure occursonly when the state of affairs in which the person takes pleasureexists (that is, when the daughter actually gets good grades). But therelevant states of affairs would not really exist if one were hookedup to the experience machine. Hence, hedonists who value propositionalpleasure rather than or in addition to sensational pleasure can denythat more pleasure is achieved by hooking oneself up to such anexperience machine (Feldman 1997, 79–105; see alsoTännsjö 1998 and Feldman 2004 for more on hedonism).

A related position rests on the claim that what is good is desiresatisfaction or the fulfillment of preferences; and what is bad is thefrustration of desires or preferences. What is desired or preferred isusually not a sensation but is, rather, a state of affairs, such ashaving a friend or accomplishing a goal. If a person desires orprefers to have true friends and true accomplishments and not to bedeluded, then hooking this person up to the experience machine neednot maximize desire satisfaction. Utilitarians who adopt this theoryof value can then claim that an agent morally ought to do an act ifand only if that act maximizes desire satisfaction or preferencefulfillment (that is, the degree to which the act achieves whatever isdesired or preferred). What maximizes desire satisfaction orpreference fulfillment need not maximize sensations of pleasure whenwhat is desired or preferred is not a sensation of pleasure. Thisposition is usually described aspreferenceutilitarianism.

One problem for preference utilitarianism concerns how to makeinterpersonal comparisons (though this problem also arises for severalother theories of value). If we want to know what one person prefers,we can ask what that person would choose in conflicts. We cannot,however, use the same method to determine whether one person’spreference is stronger or weaker than another person’spreference, since these different people might choose differently inthe decisive conflicts. We need to settle which preference (orpleasure) is stronger because we may know that Jones prefers A’sbeing done to A’s not being done (and Jones would receive morepleasure from A’s being done than from A’s not beingdone), whereas Smith prefers A’s not being done (and Smith wouldreceive more pleasure from A’s not being done than fromA’s being done). To determine whether it is right to do A or notto do A, we must be able to compare the strengths of Jones’s andSmith’s preferences (or the amounts of pleasure each wouldreceive in her preferred outcome) in order to determine whether doingA or not doing A would be better overall. Utilitarians andconsequentialists have proposed many ways to solve this problem ofinterpersonal comparison, and each attempt has received criticisms.Debates about this problem still rage. (For a recent discussion withreferences, see Coakley 2015.)

Preference utilitarianism is also often criticized on the grounds thatsome preferences are misinformed, crazy, horrendous, or trivial. Imight prefer to drink the liquid in a glass because I think that it isbeer, though it really is strong acid. Or I might prefer to die merelybecause I am clinically depressed. Or I might prefer to torturechildren. Or I might prefer to spend my life learning to write assmall as possible. In all such cases, opponents of preferenceutilitarianism can deny that what I prefer is really good. Preferenceutilitarians can respond by limiting the preferences that makesomething good, such as by referring to informed desires that do notdisappear after therapy (Brandt 1979). However, it is not clear thatsuch qualifications can solve all of the problems for a preferencetheory of value without making the theory circular by depending onsubstantive assumptions about which preferences are for goodthings.

Many consequentialists deny that all values can be reduced to anysingle ground, such as pleasure or desire satisfaction, so theyinstead adopt a pluralistic theory of value. Moore’sidealutilitarianism, for example, takes into account the values ofbeauty and truth (or knowledge) in addition to pleasure (Moore 1903,83–85, 194; 1912). Other consequentialists add the intrinsicvalues of friendship or love, freedom or ability, justice or fairness,desert, life, virtue, and so on.

If the recognized values all concern individual welfare, then thetheory of value can be calledwelfarist (Sen 1979). When awelfarist theory of value is combined with the other elements ofclassic utilitarianism, the resulting theory can be calledwelfarist consequentialism.

One non-welfarist theory of value isperfectionism, whichclaims that certain states make a person’s life good withoutnecessarily being good for the person in any way that increases thatperson’s welfare (Hurka 1993, esp. 17). If this theory of valueis combined with other elements of classic utilitarianism, theresulting theory can be calledperfectionist consequentialismor, in deference to its Aristotelian roots,eudaemonisticconsequentialism.

Similarly, some consequentialists hold that an act is right if andonly if it maximizes some function of both happiness and capabilities(Sen 1985, Nussbaum 2000). Disabilities are then seen as badregardless of whether they are accompanied by pain or loss ofpleasure.

Or one could hold that an act is right if it maximizes fulfillment (orminimizes violation) of certain specified moral rights. Such theoriesare sometimes described as autilitarianism of rights. Thisapproach could be built into total consequentialism with rightsweighed against happiness and other values or, alternatively, thedisvalue of rights violations could be lexically ranked prior to anyother kind of loss or harm (cf. Rawls 1971, 42). Such a lexicalranking within a consequentialist moral theory would yield the resultthat nobody is ever justified in violating rights for the sake ofhappiness or any value other than rights, although it would stillallow some rights violations in order to avoid or prevent other rightsviolations.

When consequentialists incorporate a variety of values, they need torank or weigh each value against the others. This is often difficult.Some consequentialists even hold that certain values areincommensurable or incomparable in that no comparison of their valuesis possible (Griffin 1986 and Chang 1997). This position allowsconsequentialists to recognize the possibility of irresolvable moraldilemmas (Sinnott-Armstrong 1988, 81; Railton 2003, 249–91).

Pluralism about values also enables consequentialists to handle manyof the problems that plague hedonistic utilitarianism. For example,opponents often charge that classical utilitarians cannot explain ourobligations to keep promises and not to lie when no pain is caused orpleasure is lost. Whether or not hedonists can meet this challenge,pluralists can hold that knowledge is intrinsically good and/or thatfalse belief is intrinsically bad. Then, if deception causes falsebeliefs, deception is instrumentally bad, and agents ought not to liewithout a good reason, even when lying causes no pain or loss ofpleasure. Since lying is an attempt to deceive, to lie is to attemptto do what is morally wrong (in the absence of defeating factors).Similarly, if a promise to do an act is an attempt to make an audiencebelieve that the promiser will do the act, then to break a promise isfor a promiser to make false a belief that the promiser created ortried to create. Although there is more tale to tell, the disvalue offalse belief can be part of a consequentialist story about why it ismorally wrong to break promises.

When such pluralist versions of consequentialism are not welfarist,some philosophers would not call themutilitarian. However,this usage is not uniform, since even non-welfarist views aresometimes called utilitarian. Whatever you call them, the importantpoint is that consequentialism and the other elements of classicalutilitarianism are compatible with many different theories about whichthings are good or valuable.

Instead of turning pluralist, some consequentialists foreswear theaggregation of values. Classic utilitarianism added up the valueswithin each part of the consequences to determine which total set ofconsequences has the most value in it. One could, instead, aggregategoods for each individual but not aggregate goods of separateindividuals (Roberts 2002). Alternatively, one could give up allaggregation, including aggregation for individuals, and instead rankthe complete worlds or sets of consequences caused byacts without adding up the values of the parts of those worlds orconsequences. One motive for this move is Moore’s principle oforganic unity (Moore 1903, 27–36), which claims that the valueof a combination or “organic unity” of two or more thingscannot be calculated simply by adding the values of the things thatare combined or unified. For example, even if punishment of a criminalcauses pain, a consequentialist can hold that a world with both thecrime and the punishment is better than a world with the crime but notthe punishment, perhaps because the former contains more justice,without adding the value of this justice to the negative value ofthe pain of the punishment. Similarly, a world might seem betterwhen people do not get pleasures that they do not deserve, even ifthis judgment is not reached by adding the values of these pleasuresto other values to calculate any total. Cases like these lead someconsequentialists to deny that moral rightness is any aggregativefunction of the values of particular effects of acts. Instead, theycompare the whole world that results from an action with thewhole world that results from not doing that action. If the former isbetter, then the action is morally right (J.J.C. Smart 1973, 32;Feldman 1997, 17–35). This approach can be calledholisticconsequentialism orworld utilitarianism.

Another way to incorporate relations among values is to considerdistribution. Compare one outcome where most people aredestitute but a few lucky people have extremely large amounts of goodswith another outcome that contains slightly less total goods but whereevery person has nearly the same amount of goods. Egalitarian criticsof classical utilitarianism argue that the latter outcome is better,so more than the total amount of good matters. Traditional hedonisticutilitarians who prefer the latter outcome often try to justifyegalitarian distributions of goods by appealing to a principle ofdiminishing marginal utility. Other consequentialists, however,incorporate a more robust commitment to equality. Early on, Sidgwick(1907, 417) responded to such objections by allowing distribution tobreak ties between other values. More recently, some consequentialistshave added some notion of fairness (Broome 1991, 192–200) ordesert (Feldman 1997, 154–74) to their test of which outcome isbest. (See also Kagan 1998, 48–59.) Others turn toprioritarianism, which puts more weight on people who are worse off(Adler and Norheim 2022, Arneson 2022). Such consequentialists do notsimply add up values; they look at patterns.

A related issue arises from population change. Imagine that agovernment considers whether to provide free contraceptives to curb arise in population. Without free contraceptives, overcrowding willbring hunger, disease, and pain, so each person will be worse off.Still, each new person will have enough pleasure and other goods thatthe total net utility will increase with the population. Classicutilitarianism focuses on total utility, so it seems to imply thatthis government should not provide free contraceptives. That seemsimplausible to many utilitarians. To avoid this result, someutilitarians claim that an act is morally wrong if and only if itsconsequences contain more pain (or other disvalues) than analternative, regardless of positive values (cf. R. N. Smart 1958).Thisnegative utilitarianism implies that the governmentshould provide contraceptives, since that program reduces pain (andother disvalues), even though it also decreases total net pleasure (orgood). Unfortunately, negative utilitarianism also seems to imply thatthe government should painlessly kill everyone it can, since deadpeople feel no pain (and have no false beliefs, diseases, ordisabilities – though killing them does cause loss of ability).A more popular response is average utilitarianism, which says that thebest consequences are those with the highest average utility (cf.Rawls 1971, 161–75). The average utility would be higher withthe contraceptive program than without it, so average utilitarianismyields the more plausible result—that the government shouldadopt the contraceptive program. Critics sometimes charge that theaverage utility could also be increased by killing the worst off, butthis claim is not at all clear, because such killing would puteveryone in danger (since, after the worst off are killed, anothergroup becomes the worst off, and then they might be killed next).Still, average utilitarianism faces problems of its own (such as“the mere addition paradox” in Parfit 1984, chap. 19). Inany case, all maximizing consequentialists, whether or not they arepluralists, must decide whether moral rightness depends on maximizingtotal good or average good.

A final challenge to consequentialists’ accounts of valuederives from Geach 1956 and has been pressed by Thomson 2001. Thomsonargues that “A is a good X” (such as a good poison) doesnot entail “A is good”, so the term “good” isan attributive adjective and cannot legitimately be used withoutqualification. On this view, it is senseless to call something goodunless this means that it is good for someone or in some respect orfor some use or at some activity or as an instance of some kind.Consequentialists are supposed to violate this restriction when theysay that the total or average consequences or the world as a whole isgood without any such qualification. However, consequentialists canrespond either that the term “good” has predicative usesin addition to its attributive uses or that when they call a world ortotal set of consequences good, they are calling it good forconsequences or for a world (Sinnott-Armstrong 2003a). If so, the factthat “good” is often used attributively creates no problemfor consequentialists.

4. Which Consequences? Actual vs. Expected Consequentialisms

A second set of problems for classic utilitarianism isepistemological. Classic utilitarianism seems to require that agentscalculate all consequences of each act for every person for all time.That’s impossible.

This objection rests on a misinterpretation. These critics assume thatthe principle of utility is supposed to be used as adecisionprocedure orguide, that is, as a method that agentsconsciously apply to acts in advance to help them make decisions.However, most classic and contemporary utilitarians andconsequentialists do not propose their principles as decisionprocedures. (Bales 1971) Bentham wrote, “It is not to beexpected that this process [his hedonic calculus] should be strictlypursued previously to every moral judgment.” (1789, Chap. IV,Sec. VI) Mill agreed, “it is a misapprehension of theutilitarian mode of thought to conceive it as implying that peopleshould fix their minds upon so wide a generality as the world, orsociety at large.” (1861, Chap. II, Par. 19) Sidgwick added,“It is not necessary that the end which gives the criterion ofrightness should always be the end at which we consciously aim.”(1907, 413)

Instead, most consequentialists claim that overall utility is thecriterion orstandard of what is morally right ormorally ought to be done. Their theories are intended to spell out thenecessary and sufficient conditions for an act to be morally right,regardless of whether the agent can tell in advance whether thoseconditions are met. Just as the laws of physics govern golf ballflight, but golfers need not calculate physical forces while planningshots; so overall utility can determine which decisions are morallyright, even if agents need not calculate utilities while makingdecisions. If the principle of utility is used as a criterion of theright rather than as a decision procedure, then classicalutilitarianism does not require that anyone know the totalconsequences of anything before making a decision.

Furthermore, a utilitarian criterion of right implies that it wouldnot be morally right to use the principle of utility as a decisionprocedure in cases where it would not maximize utility to try tocalculate utilities before acting. Utilitarians regularly argue thatmost people in most circumstances ought not to try to calculateutilities, because they are too likely to make serious miscalculationsthat will lead them to perform actions that reduce utility. It is evenpossible to hold that most agents usually ought to follow their moralintuitions, because these intuitions evolved to lead us to performacts that maximize utility, at least in likely circumstances (Hare1981, 46–47). Some utilitarians (Sidgwick 1907, 489–90)suggest that a utilitarian decision procedure may be adopted as anesoteric morality by an elite group that is better at calculatingutilities, but utilitarians can, instead, hold that nobody should usethe principle of utility as a decision procedure.

This move is supposed to make consequentialism self-refuting,according to some opponents. However, there is nothing incoherentabout proposing a decision procedure that is separate from one’scriterion of the right. Similar distinctions apply in other normativerealms. The criterion of a good stock investment is its total return,but the best decision procedure still might be to reduce risk bybuying an index fund or blue-chip stocks. Criteria can, thus, beself-effacing without being self-refuting (Parfit 1984, chs. 1 and4).

Others object that this move takes the force out of consequentialism,because it leads agents to ignore consequentialism when they make realdecisions. However, a criterion of the right can be useful at a higherlevel by helping us choose among available decision procedures andrefine our decision procedures as circumstances change and we gainmore experience and knowledge. Hence, most consequentialists do notmind giving up consequentialism as a direct decision procedure as longas consequences remain the criterion of rightness (but see Chappell2001).

If overall utility is the criterion of moral rightness, then it mightseem that nobody could know what is morally right. If so, classicalutilitarianism leads to moral skepticism. However, utilitarians insistthat we can have strong reasons to believe that certain acts reduceutility, even if we have not yet inspected or predicted everyconsequence of those acts. For example, in normal circumstances, ifsomeone were to torture and kill his children, it is possible thatthis would maximize utility, but that is very unlikely. Maybe theywould have grown up to be mass murders, but it is at least as likelythat they would grow up to cure serious diseases or do other greatthings, and it is much more likely that they would have led normallyhappy (or at least not destructive) lives. So observers as well asagents have adequate reasons to believe that such acts are morallywrong, according to act utilitarianism. In many other cases, it willstill be hard to tell whether an act will maximize utility, but thatshows only that there are severe limits to our knowledge of what ismorally right. That should be neither surprising nor problematic forutilitarians.

If utilitarians want their theory to allow more moral knowledge, theycan make a different kind of move by turning from actual consequencesto expected or expectable consequences. Suppose that Alice finds arunaway teenager who asks for money to get home. Alice wants to helpand reasonably believes that buying a bus ticket home for this runawaywill help, so she buys a bus ticket and puts the runaway on the bus.Unfortunately, the bus is involved in a freak accident, and therunaway is killed. If actual consequences are what determine moralwrongness, then it was morally wrong for Alice to buy the bus ticketfor this runaway. Opponents claim that this result is absurd enough torefute classic utilitarianism.

Some utilitarians bite the bullet and say that Alice’s act wasmorally wrong, but it was blameless wrongdoing, because her motiveswere good, and she was not responsible, given that she could not haveforeseen that her act would cause harm. Since this theory makes actualconsequences determine moral rightness, it can be calledactualconsequentialism.

Other responses claim that moral rightness depends on foreseen,foreseeable, intended, or likely consequences, rather than actualones. Imagine that Bob does not in fact foresee a bad consequence thatwould make his act wrong if he did foresee it, but that Bob couldeasily have foreseen this bad consequence if he had been payingattention. Maybe he does not notice the rot on the hamburger he feedsto his kids which makes them sick. Ifforeseen consequencesare what matter, then Bob’s act is not morally wrong. Ifforeseeable consequences are what matter, then Bob’sact is morally wrong, because the bad consequences were foreseeable.Now consider Bob’s wife, Carol, who notices that the meat isrotten but does not want to have to buy more, so she feeds it to herchildren anyway, hoping that it will not make them sick; but it does.Carol’s act is morally wrong if foreseen or foreseeableconsequences are what matter, but not if what matter areintended consequences, because she does not intend to makeher children sick. Finally, consider Bob and Carol’s son Don,who does not know enough about food to be able to know that eatingrotten meat can make people sick. If Don feeds the rotten meat to hislittle sister, and it makes her sick, then the bad consequences arenot intended, foreseen, or even foreseeable by Don, but those badresults are still objectivelylikely orprobable,unlike the case of Alice. Some philosophers deny that probability canbe fully objective, but at least the consequences here are foreseeableby others who are more informed than Don can be at the time. For Donto feed the rotten meat to his sister is, therefore, morally wrong iflikely consequences are what matter, but not morally wrong if whatmatter are foreseen or foreseeable or intended consequences.

Consequentialist moral theories that focus on actual or objectivelyprobable consequences are often described asobjectiveconsequentialism (Railton 1984). In contrast, consequentialistmoral theories that focus on intended or foreseen consequences areusually described assubjective consequentialism.Consequentialist moral theories that focus on reasonably foreseeableconsequences are then not subjective insofar as they do not depend onanything inside the actual subject’s mind, but they aresubjective insofar as they do depend on which consequences thisparticular subject would foresee if he or she were better informed ormore rational.

One final solution to these epistemological problems deploys the legalnotion of proximate cause. If consequentialists define consequences interms of what is caused (unlike Sosa 1993), then which future eventscount as consequences is affected by which notion of causation is usedto define consequences. Suppose I give a set of steak knives to afriend. Unforeseeably, when she opens my present, the decorativepattern on the knives somehow reminds her of something horrible thather husband did. This memory makes her so angry that she voluntarilystabs and kills him with one of the knives. She would not have killedher husband if I had given her spoons instead of knives. Did mydecision or my act of giving her knives cause her husband’sdeath? Most people (and the law) would say that the cause was her act,not mine. Why? One explanation is that her voluntary act intervened inthe causal chain between my act and her husband’s death.Moreover, even if she did not voluntarily kill him, but instead sheslipped and fell on the knives, thereby killing herself, my gift wouldstill not be a cause of her death, because the coincidence of herfalling intervened between my act and her death. The point is that,when voluntary acts and coincidences intervene in certain causalchains, then the results are not seen as caused by the acts furtherback in the chain of necessary conditions (Hart and Honoré1985). Now, if we assume that an act must be such a proximate cause ofa harm in order for that harm to be a consequence of that act, thenconsequentialists can claim that the moral rightness of that act isdetermined only by such proximate consequences. This position, whichmight be calledproximate consequentialism, makes it mucheasier for agents and observers to justify moral judgments of actsbecause it obviates the need to predict non-proximate consequences indistant times and places. Hence, this move is worth considering, eventhough it has never been developed as far as I know and deviates farfrom traditional consequentialism, which counts not only proximateconsequences but all upshots — that is, everything for which theact is a causally necessary condition.

5. Consequences of What? Rights, Relativity, and Rules

Another problem for utilitarianism is that it seems to overlookjustice and rights. One common illustration is called Transplant.Imagine that each of five patients in a hospital will die without anorgan transplant. The patient in Room 1 needs a heart, the patient inRoom 2 needs a liver, the patient in Room 3 needs a kidney, and so on.The person in Room 6 is in the hospital for routine tests. Luckily(for them, not for him!), his tissue is compatible with the other fivepatients, and a specialist is available to transplant his organs intothe other five. This operation would save all five of their lives,while killing the “donor”. There is no other way to saveany of the other five patients (Foot 1966, Thomson 1976; comparerelated cases in Carritt 1947 and McCloskey 1965).

We need to add that the organ recipients will emerge healthy, thesource of the organs will remain secret, the doctor won’t becaught or punished for cutting up the “donor”, and thedoctor knows all of this to a high degree of probability (despite thefact that many others will help in the operation). Still, with theright details filled in (no matter how unrealistic), it looks as ifcutting up the “donor” will maximize utility, since fivelives have more utility than one life (assuming that the five lives donot contribute too much to overpopulation). If so, then classicalutilitarianism implies that it would not be morally wrong for thedoctor to perform the transplant and even that it would be morallywrong for the doctor not to perform the transplant. Most people findthis result abominable. They take this example to show how bad it canbe when utilitarians overlook individual rights, such as the unwillingdonor’s right to life.

Utilitarians can bite the bullet, again. They can deny that it ismorally wrong to cut up the “donor” in thesecircumstances. Of course, doctors still should not cut up theirpatients in anything close to normal circumstances, but this exampleis so abnormal and unrealistic that we should not expect our normalmoral rules to apply, and we should not trust our moral intuitions,which evolved to fit normal situations (Sprigge 1965). Manyutilitarians are happy to reject common moral intuitions in this case,like many others (cf. Singer 1974, Unger 1996, Norcross 1997).

Most utilitarians lack such strong stomachs (or teeth), so they modifyutilitarianism to bring it in line with common moral intuitions,including the intuition that doctors should not cut up innocentpatients. One attempt claims that a killing is worse than a death. Thedoctor would have to kill the “donor” in order to preventthe deaths of the five patients, but nobody is killed if the fivepatients die. If one killing is worse than five deaths that do notinvolve killing, then the world that results from the doctorperforming the transplant is worse than the world that results fromthe doctor not performing the transplant. With this new theory ofvalue, consequentialists can agree with others that it is morallywrong for the doctor to cut up the “donor” in thisexample.

A modified example still seems problematic. Just suppose that the fivepatients need a kidney, a lung, a heart, and so forth because theywere all victims of murder attempts. Then the world will contain thefive killings of them if they die, but not if they do not die. Thus,even if killings are worse than deaths that are not killings, theworld will still be better overall (because it will contain fewerkillings as well as fewer deaths) if the doctor cuts up the“donor” to save the five other patients. But most peoplestill think it would be morally wrong for the doctor to kill the oneto prevent the five killings. The reason is that it is not the doctorwho kills the five, and the doctor’s duty seems to be to reducethe amount of killing that she herself does. In this view, the doctoris not required topromote life or decrease death or evendecrease killing by other people. The doctor is, instead, required tohonor the value of life by not causing loss of life (cf.Pettit 1997).

This kind of case leads some consequentialists to introduceagent-relativity into their theory of value (Sen 1982, Broome 1991,Portmore 2001, 2003, 2011). To apply a consequentialist moral theory,we need to compare the world with the transplant to the world withoutthe transplant. If this comparative evaluation must be agent-neutral,then, if an observer judges that the world with the transplant isbetter, the agent must make the same judgment, or else one of them ismistaken. However, if such evaluations can be agent-relative, then itcould be legitimate for an observer to judge that the world with thetransplant is better (since it contains fewer killings by anyone),while it is also legitimate for the doctor as agent to judge that theworld with the transplant is worse (because it includes a killingby him). In other cases, such as competitions, it mightmaximize the good from an agent’s perspective to do an act,while maximizing the good from an observer’s perspective to stopthe agent from doing that very act. If such agent-relative value makessense, then it can be built into consequentialism to produce the claimthat an act is morally wrong if and only if the act’sconsequences include less overall value from the perspective of theagent. Thisagent-relative consequentialism, plus the claimthat the world with the transplant is worse from the perspective ofthe doctor, could justify the doctor’s judgment that it would bemorally wrong for him to perform the transplant. A key move here is toadopt the agent’s perspective in judging the agent’s act.Agent-neutral consequentialists judge all acts from theobserver’s perspective, so they would judge the doctor’sact to be wrong, since the world with the transplant is better from anobserver’s perspective. In contrast, an agent-relative approachrequires observers to adopt the doctor’s perspective in judgingwhether it would be morally wrong for the doctor to perform thetransplant. This kind of agent-relative consequentialism is thensupposed to capture commonsense moral intuitions in such cases(Portmore 2011).

Agent-relativity is also supposed to solve other problems. W. D. Ross(1930, 34–35) argued that, if breaking a promise created onlyslightly more happiness overall than keeping the promise, then theagent morally ought to break the promise according to classicutilitarianism. This supposed counterexample cannot be avoided simplyby claiming that keeping promises has agent-neutral value, sincekeeping one promise might prevent someone else from keeping anotherpromise. Still, agent-relative consequentialists can respond thatkeeping a promise has great value from the perspective of the agentwho made the promise and chooses whether or not to keep it, so theworld where a promise is kept is better from the agent’sperspective than another world where the promise is not kept, unlessenough other values override the value of keeping the promise. In thisway, agent-relative consequentialists can explain why agents morallyought not to break their promises in just the kind of case that Rossraised.

Similarly, critics of utilitarianism often argue that utilitarianscannot be good friends, because a good friend places more weight onthe welfare of his or her friends than on the welfare of strangers,but utilitarianism requires impartiality among all people. However,agent-relative consequentialists can assign more weight to the welfareof a friend of an agent when assessing the value of the consequencesof that agent’s acts. In this way, consequentialists try tocapture common moral intuitions about the duties of friendship (seealso Jackson 1991).

One final variation still causes trouble. Imagine that the doctorherself wounded the five people who need organs. If the doctor doesnot save their lives, then she will have killed them herself. In thiscase, even if the doctor can disvalue killings by herself more thankillings by other people, the world still seems better from her ownperspective if she performs the transplant. Critics will object thatit is, nonetheless, morally wrong for the doctor to perform thetransplant. Many people will not find this intuition as clear as inthe other cases, but consequentialists who do find it immoral for thedoctor to perform the transplant even in this case will need to modifyconsequentialism in some other way in order to yield the desiredjudgment.

This problem cannot be solved by building rights or fairness or desertinto the theory of value. The five do not deserve to die, and they dodeserve their lives, just as much as the one does. Each optionviolates someone’s right not to be killed and is unfair tosomeone. So consequentialists need more than just new values if theywant to avoid endorsing this transplant.

One option is to go indirect. Adirect consequentialist holdsthat the moral qualities of something depend only on the consequencesof that very thing. Thus, a direct consequentialist about motivesholds that the moral qualities of a motive depend on the consequencesof that motive. A direct consequentialist about virtues holds that themoral qualities of a character trait (such as whether or not it is amoral virtue) depend on the consequences of that trait (Driver 2001a,Hurka 2001, Jamieson 2005, Bradley 2005). A direct consequentialistabout acts holds that the moral qualities of an act depend on theconsequences of that act. Someone who adopts direct consequentialismabout everything is aglobal direct consequentialist (Pettitand Smith 2000, Driver 2012).

In contrast, anindirect consequentialist holds that themoral qualities of something depend on the consequences of somethingelse. One indirect version of consequentialism ismotiveconsequentialism, which claims that the moral qualities of an actdepend on the consequences of the motive of that act (compare Adams1976 and Sverdlik 2011). Another indirect version isvirtueconsequentialism, which holds that whether an act is morallyright depends on whether it stems from or expresses a state ofcharacter that maximizes good consequences and, hence, is avirtue.

The most common indirect consequentialism isruleconsequentialism, which makes the moral rightness of an actdepend on the consequences of a rule (Singer 1961). Since a rule is anabstract entity, a rule by itself strictly has no consequences. Still,obedience rule consequentialists can ask what would happen ifeverybody obeyed a rule or what would happen if everybody violated arule. They might argue, for example, that theft is morally wrongbecause it would be disastrous if everybody broke a rule againsttheft. Often, however, it does not seem morally wrong to break a ruleeven though it would cause disaster if everybody broke it. Forexample, if everybody broke the rule “Have some children”,then our species would die out, but that hardly shows it is morallywrong not to have any children. Luckily, our species will not die outif everyone is permitted not to have children, since enough peoplewant to have children. Thus, instead of asking, “What wouldhappen if everybody did that?”, rule consequentialists shouldask, “What would happen if everybody were permitted to dothat?” People are permitted to do what violates no acceptedrule, so asking what would happen if everybody were permitted to do anact is just the flip side of asking what would happen if peopleaccepted a rule that forbids that act. Suchacceptance ruleconsequentialists then claim that an act is morally wrong if andonly if it violates a rule whose acceptance has better consequencesthan the acceptance of any incompatible rule. In some accounts, a ruleis accepted when it is built into individual consciences (Brandt1992). Other rule utilitarians, however, require that moral rules bepublicly known (Gert 2005; cf. Sinnott-Armstrong 2003b) or built intopublic institutions (Rawls 1955). Then they hold what can be calledpublic acceptance rule consequentialism: an act is morallywrong if and only if it violates a rule whose public acceptancemaximizes the good.

The indirectness of such rule utilitarianism provides a way to remainconsequentialist and yet capture the common moral intuition that it isimmoral to perform the transplant in the above situation. Supposepeople generally accepted a rule that allows a doctor to transplantorgans from a healthy person without consent when the doctor believesthat this transplant will maximize utility. Widely accepting this rulewould lead to many transplants that do not maximize utility, sincedoctors (like most people) are prone to errors in predictingconsequences and weighing utilities. Moreover, if the rule is publiclyknown, then patients will fear that they might be used as organsources, so they would be less likely to go to a doctor when they needone. The medical profession depends on trust that this public rulewould undermine. For such reasons, some rule utilitarians concludethat it would not maximize utility for people generally to accept arule that allows doctors to transplant organs from unwilling donors.If this claim is correct, then rule utilitarianism implies that it ismorally wrong for a particular doctor to use an unwilling donor, evenfor a particular transplant that would have better consequences thanany alternative even from the doctor’s own perspective. Commonmoral intuition is thereby preserved.

Rule utilitarianism faces several potential counterexamples (such aswhether public rules allowing slavery could sometimes maximizeutility) and needs to be formulated more precisely (particularly inorder to avoid collapsing into act-utilitarianism; cf. Lyons 1965).Such details are discussed in another entry in this encyclopedia (seeHooker on rule-consequentialism). Here I will just point out thatdirect consequentialists find it convoluted and implausible to judge aparticular act by the consequences of something else (Smart 1956). Whyshould mistakes by other doctors in other cases make thisdoctor’s act morally wrong, when this doctor knows for sure thathe is not mistaken in this case? Rule consequentialists can respondthat we should not claim special rights or permissions that we are notwilling to grant to every other person, and that it is arrogant tothink we are less prone to mistakes than other people are. However,this doctor can reply that he is willing to give everyone the right toviolate the usual rules in the rare cases when they do know for surethat violating those rules really maximizes utility. Anyway, even ifrule utilitarianism accords with some common substantive moralintuitions, it still seems counterintuitive in other ways. This makesit worthwhile to consider how direct consequentialists can bring theirviews in line with common moral intuitions, and whether they need todo so.

6. Consequences for Whom? Limiting the Demands of Morality

Another popular charge is that classic utilitarianism demands toomuch, because it requires us to do acts that are or should be moraloptions (neither obligatory nor forbidden). (Scheffler 1982) Forexample, imagine that my old shoes are serviceable but dirty, so Iwant a new pair of shoes that costs $100. I could wear my old shoesand give the $100 to a charity that will use my money to save someoneelse’s life. It would seem to maximize utility for me to givethe $100 to the charity. If it is morally wrong to do anything otherthan what maximizes utility, then it is morally wrong for me to buythe shoes. But buying the shoes does not seem morally wrong. It mightbe morally better to give the money to charity, but such contributionsseem supererogatory, that is, above and beyond the call of duty. Ofcourse, there are many more cases like this. When I watch television,I always (or almost always) could do more good by helping others, butit does not seem morally wrong to watch television. When I choose toteach philosophy rather than working for CARE or the Peace Corps, mychoice probably fails to maximize utility overall. If we were requiredto maximize utility, then we would have to make very different choicesin many areas of our lives. The requirement to maximize utility, thus,strikes many people as too demanding because it interferes with thepersonal decisions that most of us feel should be left up to theindividual.

Some utilitarians respond by arguing that we really are morallyrequired to change our lives so as to do a lot more to increaseoverall utility (see Kagan 1989, P. Singer 1993, and Unger 1996). Suchhard-liners claim that most of what most people do is morally wrong,because most people rarely maximize utility. Some such wrongdoingmight be blameless when agents act from innocent or even desirablemotives, but it is still supposed to be moral wrongdoing. Opponents ofutilitarianism find this claim implausible, but it is not obvious thattheir counter-utilitarian intuitions are reliable or well-grounded(Murphy 2000, chs. 1–4; cf. Mulgan 2001, Singer 2005, Greene2013).

Other utilitarians blunt the force of the demandingness objection bylimiting direct utilitarianism to what people morallyoughtto do. Even if we morally ought to maximize utility, it need not bemorally wrong to fail to maximize utility. John Stuart Mill, forexample, argued that an act is morallywrong only when bothit fails to maximize utility and its agent is liable to punishment forthe failure (Mill 1861). It does not always maximize utility to punishpeople for failing to maximize utility. Thus, on this view, it is notalways morally wrong to fail to do what one morally ought to do. IfMill is correct about this, then utilitarians can say that we ought togive much more to charity, but we are not required or obliged to doso, and failing to do so is not morally wrong (cf. Sinnott-Armstrong2005).

Many utilitarians still want to avoid the claim that we morally oughtto give so much to charity. One way around this claim uses arule-utilitarian theory of what we morally ought to do. If it coststoo much to internalize rules implying that we ought to give so muchto charity, then, according to such rule-utilitarianism, it is nottrue that we ought to give so much to charity (Hooker 2000, ch.8).

Another route follows an agent-relative theory of value. If there ismore value in benefiting oneself or one’s family and friendsthan there is disvalue in letting strangers die (without killingthem), then spending resources on oneself or one’s family andfriends would maximize the good. A problem is that suchconsequentialism would seem to imply that we morally ought not tocontribute those resources to charity, although such contributionsseem at least permissible.

More personal leeway could also be allowed by deploying the legalnotion of proximate causation. When a starving stranger would stayalive if and only if one contributed to a charity, contributing to thecharity still need not be the proximate cause of the stranger’slife, and failing to contribute need not be the proximate cause of hisor her death. Thus, if an act is morally right when it includes themost net good in its proximate consequences, then it might not bemorally wrong either to contribute to the charity or to fail to do so.This potential position, as mentioned above, has not yet beendeveloped, as far as I know.

Yet another way to reach this conclusion is to give up maximizationand to hold instead that we morally ought to do what creates enoughutility. This position is often described assatisficingconsequentialism (Slote 1984). According to satisficingconsequentialism, it is not morally wrong to fail to contribute to acharity if one contributes enough to other charities and if the moneyor time that one could contribute does create enough good, so it isnot just wasted. (For criticisms, see Bradley 2006.) A relatedposition isprogressive consequentialism, which holds that wemorally ought to improve the world or make it better than it would beif we did nothing, but we don’t have to improve it as much as wecan (Elliot and Jamieson, 2009). Both satisficing and progressiveconsequentialism allow us to devote some of our time and money topersonal projects that do not maximize overall good.

A more radical set of proposals confines consequentialism tojudgements about how good an act is on a scale (Norcross 2006, 2020)or to degrees of wrongness and rightness (Sinhababu 2018). Thispositions are usually described asscalarconsequentialism. A scalar consequentialist can refuse to saywhether it is absolutely right or wrong to give $1000 to charity, forexample, but still say that giving $1000 to charity is better and moreright than giving only $100 and simultaneously worse and more wrongthan giving $10,000. A relatedcontrastivist consequentialismcould say that one ought to give $1000 in contrast with $100 but notin contrast with $10,000 (cf. Snedegar 2017). Such positions canalso hold that less or less severe negative sanctions are justifiedwhen an agent’s act is worse than a smaller set of alternativescompared to when the agent’s act is worse than a larger set ofalternatives. This approach then becomes less demanding, both becauseit sees less negative sanctions as justified when the agent fails todo the best act possible, and also because it avoids saying thateveryday actions are simply wrong without comparison to any set ofalternatives.

Opponents still object that all such consequentialist theories aremisdirected. When I decide to visit a friend instead of working for acharity, I can know that my act is not immoral even if I have notcalculated that the visit will create enough overall good or that itwill improve the world. These critics hold that friendship requires usto do certain favors for friends without weighing our friends’welfare impartially against the welfare of strangers. Similarly, if Ineed to choose between saving my drowning wife and saving a drowningstranger, it would be “one thought too many” (Williams1981) for me to calculate the consequences of each act. I morallyshould save my wife straightaway without calculating utilities.

In response, utilitarians can remind critics that the principle ofutility is intended as only a criterion of right and not as a decisionprocedure, so utilitarianism does not imply that people ought tocalculate utilities before acting (Railton 1984). Consequentialistscan also allow the special perspective of a friend or spouse to bereflected in agent-relative value assessments (Sen 1982, Broome 1991,Portmore 2001, 2003) or probability assessments (Jackson 1991). Itremains controversial, however, whether any form of consequentialismcan adequately incorporate common moral intuitions aboutfriendship.

7. Arguments for Consequentialism

Even if consequentialists can accommodate or explain away common moralintuitions, that might seem only to answer objections without yetgiving any positive reason to accept consequentialism. However, mostpeople begin with thepresumption that we morally ought tomake the world better when we can. The question then is only whetherany moral constraints or moral options need to be added to the basicconsequentialist factor in moral reasoning. (Kagan 1989, 1998) If noobjection reveals any need for anything beyond consequences, thenconsequences alone seem to determine what is morally right or wrong,just as consequentialists claim.

This line of reasoning will not convince opponents who remainunsatisfied by consequentialist responses to objections. Moreover,even if consequentialists do respond adequately to every proposedobjection, that would not show that consequentialism is correct oreven defensible. It might face new problems that nobody has yetrecognized. Even if every possible objection is refuted, we might haveno reason to reject consequentialism but still no reason to acceptit.

In case a positive reason is needed, consequentialists present a widevariety of arguments. One common move attacks opponents. If the onlyplausible options in moral theory lie on a certain list (say,Kantianism, contractarianism, virtue theory, pluralistic intuitionism,and consequentialism), then consequentialists can argue for their owntheory by criticizing the others. Thisdisjunctive syllogismorprocess of elimination will be only as strong as the setof objections to the alternatives, and the argument fails if even onecompetitor survives. Moreover, the argument assumes that the originallist is complete. It is hard to see how that assumption could bejustified.

Consequentialism also might be supported by aninference to thebest explanation of our moral intuitions. This argument mightsurprise those who think of consequentialism as counterintuitive, butin fact consequentialists can explain many moral intuitions thattrouble deontological theories. Moderate deontologists, for example,often judge that it is morally wrong to kill one person to save fivebut not morally wrong to kill one person to save a million. They neverspecify the line between what is morally wrong and what is not morallywrong, and it is hard to imagine any non-arbitrary way fordeontologists to justify a cutoff point. In contrast,consequentialists can simply say that the line belongs wherever thebenefits most outweigh the costs, including any bad side effects (cf.Sinnott-Armstrong 2007). Similarly, when two promises conflict, itoften seems clear which one we should keep, and that intuition canoften be explained by the amount of harm that would be caused bybreaking each promise. In contrast, deontologists are hard pressed toexplain which promise is overriding if the reason to keep each promiseis simply that it was made (Sinnott-Armstrong 2009). Ifconsequentialists can better explain more common moral intuitions,then consequentialism might have more explanatory coherence overall,despite being counterintuitive in some cases. (Compare Sidgwick 1907,Book IV, Chap. III; and Sverdlik 2011.) And even if actconsequentialists cannot argue in this way, it still might work forrule consequentialists (such as Hooker 2000).

Consequentialists also might be supported bydeductivearguments from abstract moral intuitions. Sidgwick (1907, Book III,Chap. XIII) seemed to think that the principle of utility follows fromcertain very general self-evident principles, includinguniversalizability (if an act ought to be done, then every other actthat resembles it in all relevant respects also ought to be done),rationality (one ought to aim at the good generally rather than at anyparticular part of the good), and equality (“the good of any oneindividual is of no more importance, from the point of view ... of theUniverse, than the good of any other”).

Other consequentialists are more skeptical about moral intuitions, sothey seek foundations outside morality, either in non-normative factsor in non-moral norms. Mill (1861) is infamous for his“proof” of the principle of utility from empiricalobservations about what we desire (cf. Sayre-McCord 2001). Incontrast, Hare (1963, 1981) tries to derive his version ofutilitarianism from substantively neutral accounts of morality, ofmoral language, and of rationality (cf. Sinnott-Armstrong 2001).Similarly, Gewirth (1978) tries to derive his variant ofconsequentialism from metaphysical truths about actions.

Yet another argument for a kind of consequentialism iscontractarian. Harsanyi (1977, 1978) argues that allinformed, rational people whose impartiality is ensured because theydo not know their place in society would favor a kind ofconsequentialism. Broome (1991) elaborates and extendsHarsanyi’s argument.

Other forms of arguments have also been invoked on behalf ofconsequentialism (e.g. Cummiskey 1996, P. Singer 1993;Sinnott-Armstrong 1992). However, each of these arguments has alsobeen subjected to criticisms.

Even if none of these arguments proves consequentialism, there stillmight be no adequate reason to deny consequentialism. We might have noreason either to deny consequentialism or to assert it.Consequentialism could then remain a live option even if it is notproven.

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