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A REFUTATION OF CONSEQUENTIALISM
Author(s) -
Guay Robert
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
metaphilosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.475
H-Index - 35
eISSN - 1467-9973
pISSN - 0026-1068
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9973.2005.00373.x
Subject(s) - consequentialism , action (physics) , context (archaeology) , argument (complex analysis) , consistency (knowledge bases) , epistemology , maximization , law and economics , satisficing , set (abstract data type) , economics , mathematical economics , philosophy , computer science , microeconomics , paleontology , biochemistry , physics , chemistry , quantum mechanics , artificial intelligence , programming language , biology
This article argues that consequentialism does not work as a comprehensive theory of right action. The argument is that what course of action maximizes the good makes sense only within a particular context, but that it is impossible to supply such a context while adhering to a global consistency requirement. A global consistency requirement merely specifies the demand for maximization: it insists that an individual action, in order to be morally right, must be optimific relative not only to a set of temporally and spatially local alternatives but also to all future possibilities that the action would preclude. I further argue that an appropriate context is impossible to provide because act consequentialism invokes incompatible temporal horizons, that of action and that of a maximizable good. The incompatibility between these two horizons makes it impossible for there to be any morally salient, consistent assignment of consequences to actions, and thus renders act consequentialism empty.