Commonsense Consequentialism

Wherein Morality Meets Rationality

DOUGLAS W. PORTMORE [Home Page] [Research Page] [CV]

Latest Update: 11/16/09 (See the dates that appear in boldface type below for those portions of the book that have been most recently updated.)

Currently, I’m working on a book on morality, rationality, and the interconnections between the two. In it, I defend a version of consequentialism that both comports with our commonsense moral intuitions and shares with other consequentialist theories the same compelling teleological conception of practical reasons. I have a complete draft of the book finished, but I’m still in the process of revising it. I would be very grateful, then, to those who send me comments, as this would be of tremendous help to me in revising it. Please send whatever comments or criticisms that you have, however small, to douglas.portmore@asu.edu.

Unless otherwise indicated, the links below are to files in MS Word 97-2003 (with .doc extensions). If you can’t read files in MS Word 97-2003 and would like me to send you any or all of these files in some other format, then please email me.

I welcome citations to this work, but please let me know if you do cite it. And please check with me before quoting from it given that it is still very much a work in progress.

If you’re interested in a brief synopsis of each chapter, you’ll find it below by scrolling down or by clicking on the link provided.

Please note that chapters are being updated regularly as comments come in. Thus, unless you intend to download and read all of the chapters in one sitting, you’re better off downloading each chapter as you go.

*The last chapter is password protected. The others are freely available. If you don’t have the password, please email me at douglas.portmore@asu.edu and I’ll send it to you. I’m happy to give the password to anyone who asks for it; I just want to keep track of who is reading the manuscript.

Contents

0. Front Matter

0.1. Title Page (First Posted: 11/3/08. Current Draft: 5/27/09)

0.2. Dedication (First Posted: 11/3/08. Current Draft: 5/27/09)

0.3. Table of contents (First Posted: 10/6/08. Current Draft: 11/2/09)

0.4. Acknowledgements (First Posted: 11/3/08. Current Draft: 11/2/09)

1. Introduction (20 pp. – 9,302 words – First Posted: 12/26/08. Current Draft: 10/21/09)

1.1. Utilitarianism: The good and the bad

1.2. The plan for the rest of the book

1.3. My aims

1.4. Objective oughts and objective reasons

1.5. Conventions that I’ll follow throughout the book

2. Consequentialism and Moral Rationalism (37 pp. – 17,515 words – First Posted: 11/3/08. Current Draft: 11/3/09)

2.1. The too-demanding objection: How moral rationalism leads us to reject utilitarianism

2.2. The argument against utilitarianism from moral rationalism

2.3. How moral rationalism compels us to accept consequentialism

2.4. What is consequentialism?

2.5. The presumptive case for moral rationalism

2.6. Some concluding remarks

3. The Teleological Conception of Practical Reasons (31 pp. – 15,151 words – First Posted: 11/7/08. Current Draft: 11/3/09)

3.1. Getting clear on what the view is

3.2. Clearing up some misconceptions about the view

3.3. Scanlon’s putative counterexamples to the view

3.4. Arguments for the view

4. Consequentializing Commonsense Morality (37 pp. – 16,225 words – First Posted: 12/1/08. Current Draft: 10/25/09)

4.1. How to consequentialize

4.2. The deontic equivalence thesis

4.3. Beyond the deontic equivalence thesis: How consequentialist theories can do a better job of accounting for our considered moral convictions than even some nonconsequentialist theories can

4.4. The implications of the deontic equivalence thesis

4.5. An objection

5. Dual-Ranking Act-Consequentialism: Reasons, Morality, and Overridingness (37 pp. – 16, 476 words – First Posted: 1/29/09. Current Draft: 11/3/09)

5.1. Some quick clarifications

5.2. Moral reasons, overridingness, and agent-centered options

5.3. Moral reasons, overridingness, and supererogation

5.4. A meta-criterion of rightness and how it leads us to adopt dual-ranking act-consequentialism

5.5. Norcross’s objection

5.6. Splawn’s objection

5.7. Violations of the transitivity and independence axioms

6. Imperfect Reasons and Rational Options (42 pp. – 20,360 words – First Posted: 4/15/09. Current Draft: 8/31/09)

6.1. Kagan’s objection: Are we sacrificing rational options to get moral options?

6.2. Imperfect reasons and rational options

6.3. The future-course-of-action theory of objective rationality

6.4. Accounting for the basic belief

6.5. Accounting for the rational status of an act-sequence

6.6. Objections to the theory

7. Commonsense Consequentialism [Password Protected*] (39 pp. – 17,354 words – First Posted: 5/13/09. Current Draft: 11/16/09)

7.1. The argument thus far

7.2. Why dual-ranking act-consequentialism needs modification

7.3. Actualism versus possibilism

7.4. Future-course-of-action consequentialism and the argument for it

7.5. Commonsense consequentialism and how it compares with traditional act-consequentialism

7.6. What has been shown and what remains to be shown

8. Back Matter

8.1. Glossary (18 pp. – 5,927 words – First Posted: 11/3/08. Current Draft: 9/30/09)

8.2. List of propositions

8.3. Bibliography (14 pp. – 3,273 words – First Posted: 11/3/08. Current Draft: 11/15/09)

8.4. Index of names

8.5. Index of subjects

A Brief Synopsis of Each Chapter

Chapter 1: Explains the basic motivation for the book: to find a theory that accommodates what’s compelling about act-utilitarianism while avoiding all, or at least most, of its counterintuitive implications. Explains the plan for the book as well as my aims in writing it. Explains that the book’s focus is on what we objectively ought to do and how this objective sense of ‘ought’ relates to our first-person practical deliberations and to our everyday practices of blaming and advising. Explains why objective oughts and objective reasons are of fundamental importance. Explains my conventions regarding citations, symbolic notation, the numbering of propositions, etc.

Chapter 2: Argues that we should reject all traditional forms of act-consequentialism if moral rationalism is true. (Moral rationalism, as I define it, says that if S is morally required to perform x, then S has decisive reason, all things considered, to perform x.) Argues that moral rationalism in conjunction with a certain conception of practical reasons (viz., the teleological conception of reasons) compels us to accept act-consequentialism. Gives a presumptive argument in favor of moral rationalism. Argues that act-consequentialism is best construed as a theory that ranks outcomes, not according to their value, but according to how much reason each agent has to desire that they obtain.

Chapter 3: Argues for the teleological conception of reasons, which holds that S has more reason to perform x than to perform y just when, and because, S has more reason to desire that x’s outcome obtains than to desire that y’s outcome obtains. Tries to counter many misconceptions about the view. Summarizes the argument that’s given for act-consequentialism in this and the preceding chapter as follows:

§ Moral Rationalism: An act’s deontic status is determined by the agent’s reasons for and against performing it, such that, if a subject, S, is morally required to perform an act, x, then S has most reason to perform x.

§ Teleological Conception of Reasons: The agent’s reasons for and against performing an act are determined by her reasons for and against preferring its outcome to those of the available alternatives, such that, if S has most reason to perform x, then, of all the outcomes that S could bring about, S has most reason to desire that x’s outcome obtains.

Therefore,

§ Act-Consequentialism: An act’s deontic status is determined by the agent’s reasons for and against preferring its outcome to those of the available alternatives, such that, if S is morally required to perform x, then, of all the outcomes that S could bring about, S has most reason to desire that x’s outcome obtains.

Chapter 4: Argues that, for any plausible nonconsequentialist moral theory, there is a consequentialist counterpart that is extensionally equivalent to it. Argues that from this it does not follow, as some have claimed, that we are all consequentialists. Argues that consequentialism can better account for certain commonsense moral intuitions than victim-focused deontology can.

Chapter 5: Argues that in order to accommodate many typical agent-centered options and resolve the paradox of supererogation, we must accept that non-moral reasons can, and sometimes do, prevent moral reasons, even those with considerable moral requiring strength, from generating moral requirements. Argues that, given that moral permissibility is a function of both moral and non-moral reasons, we should accept that S’s performing x is morally permissible if and only if there is no available alternative that S has both more (moral) requiring reason and more reason, all things considered, to perform. Argues that, given this, we need to accept a dual-ranking version of consequentialism—one that ranks outcomes both in terms of how much moral reason the agent has to want them to obtain and in terms of how much reason, all things considered, the agent has to want them to obtain. Addresses a number of objections to this dual-ranking version of consequentialism.

Chapter 6: Addresses Kagan’s worry that if we defend agent-centered options, as I have, by arguing that non-moral reasons can successfully counter moral reasons and thereby prevent them from generating moral requirements, we end up sacrificing rational options to get moral options. Defends a theory of objective rationality according to which the objective rationality of an individual act is determined by whether or not it is contained within some rationally permissible sequence of actions that extends from the present to one’s death. Argues that this theory can best account for what Raz calls the basic belief: the belief that, in most typical choice situations, the relevant reasons do not require performing one particular act alternative, but instead permit performing any of numerous act alternatives.

Chapter 7: Argues that an adequate moral theory must be able to assess the deontic statuses of sequences of actions and not just the deontic statuses of individual actions (tokens and types). Argues for a version of indirect consequentialism according to which the moral permissibility of an individual act is determined by whether or not it is contained within some morally permissible sequence of actions that extends from the present to one’s death. Gives an argument for this version of consequentialism. Argues that this version of consequentialism can accommodate all the basic features of commonsense morality: agent-centered restrictions, special obligations, agent-favoring options, agent-sacrificing options, supererogation, the self-other asymmetry, and even the idea that some acts are supererogatory in the sense of going above and beyond what imperfect duty requires. Argues that we should accept possibilism (the view according to which whether or not S ought to do x depends on what S could simultaneously and subsequently do were S to do x) as opposed to actualism (the view according to which whether or not S ought to do x depends on what S would simultaneously and subsequently do were S to do x).