Consequentialism

Consequentialism, as its name suggests, is the view that normative properties depend only on
consequences. Here, we are concerned with consequentialism about the moral rightness of acts, which
holds that whether an act is morally right depends only on the consequences of that act (act
consequentialism), or a general rule requiring acts of the same kind (rule consequentialism).
Consequentialism asserts that contribution to the good is in some sense first in the determination of the
moral permissibility and wrongness of actions.

There are, however, different theories of the good consistent with consequentialism. One of the more
prominent theories, utilitarianism, is a welfarist theory which identifies the good as well-being.
Utilitarians hold hedonistic act consequentialism. Classic utilitarianism is consequentialist as opposed
to deontological because it denies that moral rightness depends directly on anything other than
consequences; it reduces all morally relevant factors to consequences.

However, other consequentialists hold other theories of the good. Some argue that it is not only how
much overall welfare obtains but also its distribution. For example, Temkin argued that the fact that a
distribution of welfare is more equal than all others is always a consideration in that distribution's favor.
Parfit presented an argument from prioritarianism, that the benefits to the worse-off always matter
somewhat more than the same size benefits to the better-off. These theories of the good, alternative to
utilitarianism, are supposed to make consequentialism more palatable.

Act Consequentialism

Act consequentialism (AC) is the view that in any given situation, there is only one morally permissible
action: the one that maximizes the good. This action is also, therefore, a morally required action. Every
other action is morally wrong. AC is the claim that an act is morally right iff that act maximizes the
good, that is iff the total amount of good for all minus the total amount of bad for all is greater than this
net amount for any incompatible act available to the agent on that occasion. Simply put, whether an act
is morally right depends only on the consequences of the act considered impartially.

Rule Consequentialism

Rule consequentialism (RC) is a form of indirect consequentialism. RC states that an act is morally
right iff it is called for by the optimific set of rules, which, if accepted by everyone, would bring about
the best overall consequences. The rightness and wrongness of any particular act is not assessed
directly in terms of its consequences, but indirectly in terms of a set of rules, which is then assessed in
terms of the consequences of everyone's having that set (and not merely the consequences of an
individual/agent having them). Morally wrong actions are those that are prohibited by this optimific set
of rules. This optimific set may not necessarily require one to do what is best.

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Critiques of Consequentialism

The Demandingness/Nearest and Dearest Objection to Consequentialism

Multiple criticisms have been leveled against consequentialism. The first of these criticisms is the
demandingness objection. This criticism charges consequentialism with being too demanding. For it
requires us to give up on our projects and loves, and to abandon our near and dear. Consequentialism
requires one to keep making sacrifices for others until further sacrifices would result in less overall
welfare in the long-run.

AC construes as duties what we would have thought were supererogatory self-sacrifices/not morally
required. Sidgwick argues that AC (and utilitarianism in general) seems to require a more
comprehensive subordination of self-interest to the common good than common-sense morality does.

Given the principle of diminishing marginal utility

Each dollar can buy vastly more food in a third-world country than in a first-world country
other relatively well-off people will not give much
Then, AC would have to prescribe that to maximize utility/achieve optimific conditions, we
should give away most of our material goods to the appropriate charities
Keep just enough (very little!!) to continue earning so that you can maximize the amount you
can give over the course of your whole life
Even though it might seem unsavory to object to a moral theory because of its demandingness
(such an objection might be used by people whose self-interest is clouding their moral
judgment), it would not be fair to dismiss the objection based on this association
Objection still retains considerable force, even if we take this into account

However, in defense of AC, one may argue that an alternative and less demanding principle of aid may
be adopted. This less demanding principle of aid would require one to come to the aid of others as long
as the benefit to them is very great in comparison to the sacrifice to us. Nevertheless, this seems to be
insufficient in defending AC from the demandingness objection. Such a principle of aid, while less
demanding, still makes heavy demands on people with spare money most of us would have to
sacrifice most of our welfare to help others before we reach the point at which the sacrifice to us would
no longer be very much smaller than the benefits to others. This still seems unreasonably demanding, in
its requirement for people to sacrifice most of one's own welfare for the sake of strangers whose
suffering is not one's fault, especially when others who can help too are not doing so.

The consequentialist might do better by adopting rule consequentialism (RC) instead of AC,which
seems to do better at avoiding the demandingness objection. Being less demanding, the amount of self-
sacrifice called for by RC is not unreasonable. If each relatively well-off person contributed some
relatively small percentage of his or her income to famine relief, there would be enough to feed the
world.

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Jackson's defense of Consequentialism from the Nearest and Dearest Objection Jill and the Scarce
Drug (The Drug Example, Mark 3)

Jackson, in a thought experiment (The Drug Example, Mark 3), defends consequentialism from the
nearest and dearest objection. Jackson argues that consequentialism, properly understood, can make
plausible sense of the moral agent having and giving expression in action to a special place for family,
friends, colleagues, chosen projects, and so on and so forth. If Jackson is right, one does not need to
abandon one's nearest and dearest to adhere to consequentialism.

In Jackson's thought experiment, Doctor Jill has three patients, A, B, and C, and one drug, and only
enough of that drug to administer to a single patient. She knows that patient A will derive considerable
benefit from the drug without being completely cured, and also that one or other of patients B and C
would be completely cured by the drug. However, she also knows that one or other of patients B and C
would be killed by the drug. She has no way of telling which of B and C would be the one completely
cured and which would be the one killed. In this situation, it seems obvious that Jill ought to administer
the drug to patient A. The expected moral value attached to administering the drug to A is higher than
that for administering to B and higher than that for administering to C, because the possibility of a
rather better result in those two cases goes along with a significant chance of a very much worse result.
Of course, Jill knows that there is a better course of action open to her in the sense of a course of action
which would have better consequences than administering the drug to A, but her problem is that she
does not know whether it is administering the drug to B or administering it to C which is that better
course. Then, it would clearly be a mistake to accuse Jill of an illegitimate bias toward patient A when
she gave the drug to him rather than the others. The special regard we have for a relatively very small
group of people to the extent that it is morally justified can be explained probabilistically then, in
terms of our special epistemological status with regard to our nearest and dearest.

Then, the good consequentialist should focus her attention on securing the well-being of a relatively
small number of people, herself included, not because she rates their welfare more highly than the
welfare of others but because she is in a better position to secure their welfare. The chances of success
are much greater if she makes the relatively small group those who are her family and friends, rather
than those she hardly knows. There are exceptions to this generalization about human psychology,
perhaps Mother Teresa is one, perhaps Ralph Nader is another; from reports it seems that they have the
ability to carry through a demanding program of action which benefits a group of people which, though
tiny by comparison with the population of the world, is large by comparison with the circle of family,
friends, and associates that provide the principle focus of action for most of us. They do not seem to be
dependent on the kind of close personal relationships that are essential to keep most of us from being
outrageously selfish. It is no objection to consequentialism that, according to it, we ought to do more
than we in fact do for people we hardly know. Nonetheless, a considerable degree of focus on our
family and friends, enough to meet the demand that our lives have a meaningful focus, is plausibly
consistent with living morally defensible lives according to consequentialism.

The Critic's Response to Jackson's defense of Consequentialism

However, the critic would then question if that is even remotely plausible now that we know how much
we can do by giving money to effective charities, for we could surely do more good that way.

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The Schizophrenia Criticism of Consequentialism (Stocker)

However, even if we could embody consequentialism in our motives, we would end up essentially
fragmented and incoherent; an ideal that we should not strive for.

It is a requirement of any acceptable theory of morality that it make it possible for us to embody the
theory in our motives, to live according to it.

Any theory on which this was impossible would necessitate a schizophrenia between reason and
motive. It would require something that was psychologically uncomfortable, difficult, or even
untenable, [and] also [make] us and our lives essentially fragmented and incoherent.

It is bad enough to have a private personality, which you must hide from others; but imagine having a
personality that you must hide from (the other parts of) yourself.

Utilitarianism has it that the only good reason for acting is pleasure v.s. pain, and thus should highly
value love, friendship, affection, fellow feeling, and community. Suppose, now, you embody this
utilitarian reason as your motive in your actions and thoughts toward someone. Whatever your relation
to that person, it is necessarily not love (nor is it friendship, affection, fellow feeling, or community).
The person you supposedly love engages your thought and action not for him/herself, but rather as a
source of pleasure. Any other person who would elicit as much of this good would be as proper an
object of love as the beloved. To regard others as mere instruments or repositories of value, and to be so
regarded by others, is dehumanizing. The defect of utilitarianism, in regard to love, to take one case, is
not that they do not value love, but that it does not value the beloved.

Stocker's Hospital Example

Suppose you are in a hospital recovering from a long illness. You are very bored and restless when
Smith comes in once again. You are now convinced more than ever that he is a fine fellow and a real
friend taking so much time to cheer you up, traveling all the way across town, and so on. You are so
effusive with your praise and thanks that he protests that he always tries to do what he thinks is his
duty, what he thinks will be best. You at first think he is engaging in a polite form of self-deprecation,
relieving the moral burden. But the more you two speak, the more clear it becomes that he was telling
the literal truth: that it is not essentially because of you that he came to see you, not because you are
friends, but because he thought it his duty, perhaps as a fellow Christian or Communist or whatever, or
simply because he knows of no one more in need of cheering up and no one easier to cheer up. Surely
there is something lacking here.

The Separateness of Persons Objection to Consequentialism

A prominent critique of consequentialism charges it with ignoring the separateness of persons. Rawls
argued that utilitarianism conflates all persons into one, and does not take seriously the distinction
between persons. Nagel concurred, arguing that the sacrifice of one individual's gratification for
another's is very different from sacrificing one gratification for another within a single life. Similarly,
Nozick argued that there is no larger social individual which we all compose as individuals, for we are
all separate, distinct persons. Utilitarianism's call for sacrifice of individual welfare for the greater good

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does not sufficiently respect that the individual is a separate person. In its commitment to thinking that
there is one such large individual, and that our individual well-beings are exchangeable, utilitarianism
is wrong.

In other words, the separateness of persons objection argues that utilitarianism, and by extension,
consequentialism, is wrong, for it treats us all like one big individual, when we are in fact many distinct
persons. The common worry over consequentialism is that we should not be expected or required to
give up our own well-being for a greater well-being of others in the same way it is rational to do so
within our own lives. Our relation to others is not like our relation to our future person-stages. The
separateness of persons is morally significant, and must be accounted for; in ignoring this,
consequentialism is an incorrect moral theory. If the matter of personal identity appears less deep, the
separateness of persons, also, may come to seem less an ultimate and specially significant consideration
for morality; Williams argued.

Parfitian defense of Utilitarianism: Differences between Individuals Unimportant; The

Teletransportation Thought Experiment

However, utilitarians could counter-argue, as Parfit did, by accepting that utilitarianism does ignore the
separateness of persons, but that this does not present a problem, for the differences between
individuals are mostly unimportant. Our relation to others is more or less like that of our relation to our
future person-stages. Parfit and the utilitarian could accept the idea that persons are importantly
different from each other, but reject the idea that a utilitarian must think of others in the same way that
they think of their future person-stages.

This Parfitian response is illustrated by the teletransportation thought experiment, which

Suppose that there is a machine that could teletransport an individual, that is, copying all his cells, then
destroying and reproducing these cells in another location. The memories, beliefs, and desires of the
original human being are preserved after teletransportation. Would you step into a machine like this?
Parfit thinks that such a machine could easily be used in our society, treated as a transport device.

But suppose that on one occasion, the machine did reproduce the person somewhere else, but
did not erase the matter making up the original person. Then you have two people who are
identical the same physical structure, psychology, memories, beliefs etc. Would this be
troubling? Parfit thinks this is not too bad everything that is worth preserving has been
preserved. But we have to say that none of these people are the same as me I can't be both of
these people at the same time, no principle can make one of them identical to me, but not the
other. Thus, I must say that I have died, but it should not trouble me.
What matters is not staying the same person all the time; what matters is just that there are some
future people that are related to us psychologically, in the same way that our future time-slices
usually are.
In the actual world, it is very good that we survive; but that is because survival is the only way,
in the absence of teletransportation, to have a future person which has the same memories,
beliefs, desires as us.
Identity is not important in individual survival it is the obtaining of these psychological
connections that matter.

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Consider a similar thought experiment of the Split Brain.

The consequences of having teletransportation:

1. His death seems to him less bad.
2. He is more concerned about others, and less about himself.
Parfit: When I believed [that personal identity is what matters], I seemed imprisoned in
myself. My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at
the end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel
disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives
of other people. Bu the difference is less. Other people are closer. I am less concerned about the
rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others.
The relations I bear to my future self I also bear to many others as well. (because others share
many of my beliefs about things, my desires, have similar memories, values, and so on...)
Upshot: So, utilitarianism may be right to treat all individuals as like one big individual. We
should regard others in the same way we regard our future time-slices.
Utilitarianism does fail to treat us as separate persons, but that is fine. Our identities are not
very important, morally speaking.
But note that Parfit is not denying that we have selves or identities over time.
We should not be focusing on individuals or well-being, but experiences
It is more plausible to focus, not on persons, but on experiences, and to claim that what matters
morally is the nature of these experiences. On the impersonal Utilitarian Principle, the question
who has an experience is irrelevant as the question when the experience is had.

Williams' Response to the Parfitian defense of Utilitarianism

Williams sought to emphasize the basic importance for our thought of the ordinary idea of a self
or person which undergoes changes of character, as opposed to an approach which, even if only
metaphorically, would dissolve the person, under changes of character, into a series of 'selves'
Utilitarianism seems to require us to step outside of our projects and take on the point of view
of the universe/no one. This is not something we can do, but even if we can do it, it is an
absurd demand. It removes the meaning from our lives. (segue into the attack on integrity
criticism)

The Attacks our Integrity Objection of Consequentialism

Next, consequentialism has been criticized for attacking our integrity (in a critique attributable to
Williams). By asking us to give up our projects and loves, consequentialism makes an absurd
demand on us. Williams argues that no agent can be expected to be what a utilitarian agent has to be
someone whose decisions are a function of all the satisfactions which he can affect from where he is.
No agent can be required to abandon his own particular life and projects for the impartial point of
view or the point of view of morality.

To emphasize the basic importance for our thought of the ordinary idea of a self or person which
undergoes changes of character, as opposed to an approach which, even if only metaphorically, would

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dissolve the person, under changes of character, into a series of 'selves'.

The point is that the agent is identified with his actions as flowing from projects or attitudes which he
takes seriously at the deepest level, as what his life is about. It is absurd to demand of such a man,
when the sums come in from the utility network which the projects of others have in part determined,
that he should just step aside from his own project and decision and acknowledge the decision which
utilitarian calculation requires. It is to alienate him in a real sense from his actions and the source of his
action in his own convictions. It is to make him into a channel between the input of everyone's projects,
including his own, and an output of optimific decision; but this is to neglect the extent to which his
projects and his decisions have to be seen as the actions and decisions which flow from the projects and
attitudes with which he is most closely identified. It is thus, in the most literal sense, an attack on his
integrity.

The worry Williams presents is not that this would not be a good world, a world lacking value; but
rather, the concern is that this demand to step aside is absurd.

Such dispositions and commitments will characteristically be what gives one's life some meaning, and
gives one some reason for living it. There is simply no conceivable exercise that consists in stepping
completely outside myself and from that point of view evaluating in toto the dispositions, projects, and
affections that constitute the substance of my own life. It cannot be a reasonable aim that I or any other
particular person should take as the ideal view of the world a view from no point of view at all.

We cannot step outside of our projects and loves, and take up the point of view of the universe. Then,
consequentialism is asking us to do something we cannot do, and we simply cannot embody
consequentialism in our motives.

Moral Sainthood's Problem for Consequentialism: A Barren Life (Wolf)

Wolf argued that the idea of moral sainthood presents a problem for utilitarianism. Utilitarianism, if we
hold it consistently, should make us want to be or become a moral saint a person whose every action
is as morally good as possible; a person that is as morally worthy as can be. Yet, such a person would
be really quite unappealing. Moral sainthood is not an unequivocally compelling personal ideal. Moral
saintliness does not constitute a model of personal well-being toward which it would be particularly
rational or good or desirable for a human being to strive. We have reason not to aspire to this ideal.
This is because if the moral saint is devoting all his time to feeding the hungry or healing the sick or
raising money for Oxfam, then necessarily he is not reading Victorian novels, playing the oboe, or
improving his backhand. Although no one of the interests or tastes in the category containing these
latter activities could be claimed to be a necessary element in a life well-lived, a life in which none of
these possible aspects of character are developed may seem to be a life strangely barren. A moral saint
will have to be very, very nice, and must not be offensive; yet this might render him dull-witted or
humorless or bland. In general, the admiration of and striving toward achieving any of a great variety
of forms of personal excellence are character traits is valuable and desirable for people to have. For
example, we may strive for Katherine Hepburn's grace, Paul Newman's cool; we are attracted to the

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high-spirited passionate nature of Natasha Rostov; we admire the keen perceptiveness of Lambert
Strether.

Wolf concedes that the utilitarian would not support moral sainthood as an universal ideal, for a world
in which everyone, or even a large number of people, achieved moral sainthood even a world in
which they strove to achieve it would probably contain less happiness than a world in which people
realized a diversity of ideals involving a variety of personal and perfectionist values. So, the utilitarian
has room to acknowledge that friendship and these other characteristics are important. Yet, moral
sainthood still presents a credible problem for utilitarianism, for utilitarianism would require the
committed utilitarian to privately aspire to be a moral saint. As utilitarianism requires the committed
utilitarian to want to achieve the greatest general happiness, he would seemingly be committed to the
idea of the moral saint. This is because the gain in happiness that would accrue to oneself and one's
neighbors by a more well-rounded, richer life than that of the moral saint would be pathetically small in
comparison to the amount by which one could increase the general happiness if one devoted oneself
explicitly to the care of the sick, the downtrodden, the starving, and the homeless. Then, it seems that
Wolf's criticism of consequentialism stands; if one were to be a committed utilitarian, one should want
to be or become a moral saint, who is quite unappealing.

On consequentialism, a morally perfect being would have to live a barren life, without personal
interests and pursuits (e.g., in cooking, music, sport), and would be dull-witted, humorless or bland.
Consequentialism says that, privately, we should aspire to be this. But this is wrong; it is not a model of
living toward which it would be rational or good or desirable to strive.

The One Thought Too Many Criticism of Consequentialism (Williams)

Next, Williams criticizes consequentialism for making one have one thought too many when
interacting with friends or loved ones. Consequentialism says that only the reason for which we should
assist and spend time with our friends and loved ones is that we see that doing so would be good. It is
valuable, for it would be a contribution to the general happiness. Yet, this presents a problem for
consequentialism. It seems to involve one thought too many; we should help our friends and loved
ones rather our of love or concern for them, or enjoyment of their company. Instead, consequentialism
directs one to treat our friends and loved ones as vehicles of the good. Thus, consequentialism is
problematic.

Kagan's Epistemic Argument and Lenman's Cluelessness Objection

Kagan provides the most common objection to consequentialism the epistemic argument. As it is
impossible to know the future, you will never be absolutely certain as to what all the consequences of
your act will be. An act that looks like it will lead to the best results overall may turn out badly, since
things often do not turn out the way you think they will. Something extremely unlikely may happen,
and an act that was overwhelmingly likely to lead to good results might, for reasons beyond your
control, produce disaster.

Additionally, there may be long-term bad effects from your act, side effects that were unforeseen and
indeed unforeseeable. In fact lacking a crystal ball, how could you possibly tell what all the effects of
your act will be? So how can we tall which act will lead to the best results overall? This seems to mean
that consequentialism will be unusable as a moral guide to action. All the evidence available at the time

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of of acting may have pointed to the conclusion that a given act was the right act to perform, and yet it
may still turn out that what you did h ad horrible results, and so in fact was morally wrong. Indeed, it
will never be possible to say for sure that any given act was right or wrong, since any event can
continue to have further unseen effects down through history. Yet, if it is impossible to tell whether any
act is morally right or wrong, how can consequentialism possibly be a correct moral theory?

Lenman's Example: Malcolm The Truly Appalling

Lenman concurred with Kagan, proclaiming that the Epistemic Argument did indeed present a serious
problem for consequentialism. To illustrate this point, he employed the following thought experiment.
Imagine we are in what is now southern Germany a hundred years before the birth of Jesus. A certain
bandit, Richard, quite lost to history, has raided a village and killed all its inhabitants bar one. This final
survivor, a pregnant woman named Angie, he finds hiding in a house about to be burned. On a whim of
compassion, he orders that her life be spared. But perhaps, by consequentialist standards, he should not
have done so. For let us suppose that Angie was a great great great..... great great great grandmother of
Adolf Hitler. The millions of Hitler's victims were thus also victims of Richard's sparing of Angie.
Then, the consequentialist would have to accept that Hitler's crimes simply mean that Richard acted
wrongly, in consequentialist terms.

Lenman argues that this, however, is false, as Hitler's crimes may not be the most significant
consequence of Richard's action. Perhaps, had Richard killed Angie, her son, Peter, would have
avenged her, thus causing Richard's widowed wife Samantha to get married again to Francis. And
perhaps had all this happened Francis and Samantha would have had a descendant 115 generations on,
Malcolm the Truly Appalling, who would have conquered the world and in doing so committed crimes
vastly more extensive and terrible than those of Hitler. Then, the decision to spare Angie is an event
with massive causal ramifications. And it is highly plausible that almost all killings and engenderings
and refrainings from these have similarly massive causal ramifications. These actions ramify in
massive ways most obviously because they are 'identity-affecting'. These are actions that make a
difference to the identities of future persons and these differences are apt to amplify exponentially
down the generations.

Killings and engenderings are among the most intrinsically morally significant things we do, the kinds
of action at which a large amount of our most serious moral thinking and theorizing is directed. But
these are the very actions about whose overall consequences the agents are most apt to know, relatively
speaking, as good as nothing. Then, we have only the feeblest of grounds, from an objective
consequentialist perspective, to suppose that the crimes of Hitler were wrong. While Hitler was
responsible for the deaths of millions of people, the full consequences of each death are plausibly no
less vast and impenetrable than the consequences of the sparing of Angie.

Lenman's Cluelessness Objection: A Refinement of the Epistemic Argument

However, Lenman further argues that the worry is not merely that we cannot not have perfect certainty
over the consequences of our actions, but that we are almost literally clueless about the overall
consequences of many of our actions. The moral value of the sparing of Angie is utterly inscrutable, by
consequentialist standards, for the causal ramifications of what Malcolm the Truly Appalling himself
does are so astronomically great. Any clue that we may have about the overall consequences of our
action is a clue of bewildering insignificance bordering on uselessness, like a detective's discovery of a

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fragment of evidence pointing inconclusively to the murderer's having been under seven feet tall. The
trouble for consequentialism then is that the foreseeable consequences of an action are so often a drop
in the ocean of its actual consequences. [Include Lenman's Richard and Angie example] All Richard
knows about his action is that it makes the difference between life and death for Angie. That is, of
course, tremendously important for Angie. But this contribution to the good is only a tiny detail in the
overall consequences of Richard's actions. So it gives only the weakest of reasons for him to think his
action, by consequentialist standards, right or wrong.

Kagan's Cancelling-Out Response

Kagan would reject Lenman's Cluelessness objection by arguing that the good and bad in the
unforeseen consequences would cancel out, leaving the foreseen consequences to make the difference.
Then, a consequentialist can indeed explain why it is right to spare Angie, and that Lenman's claim that
consequentialism is problematic because we do not have a clue about the consequences of our actions
is, itself, problematic.

Lenman's Rejoinder: e.g. Benjamin the Financier and Normandy

[Include Lenman's Richard and Angie example] Lenman would defend his cluelessness argument.

First, consider the case of Benjamin the Financier, who needs to make a decision on whether or not to
make a transaction. The financial consequences of Benjamin's decision will be vast for very many
people, but there is no way of knowing which option would be best. However, Benjamin does know
that Mrs Jennifer Lawson of 17 Cedar Row, Macclesfield, will be 100 better off than otherwise if he
carries out the transaction. However, in terms of what he needs to know to maximize what he wants to
maximize, he still has no clue; even if he did, the clue is surely as good as worthless. Even if the
information Benjamin has about Mrs Lawson gives him a reason to favor making his transaction over
not making it, it is an extremely weak reason (because he has no reason to think that the other
consequences equaled each other, or that there were no other consequences).

Next, consider Lenman's Normandy example. Suppose you are in charge of plans for the Normandy
landings for the Allied Forces in World War II. You are told by your staff that two very different plans
of campaign have been worked out, plan A and plan B, of which you must choose one. You know, of
course, that the plan you choose will have momentous consequences for the soldiers on the ground, for
civilian populations, for the future course of the war. And you know too, that if you choose plan A, a
certain dog, Spot, belonging to the harbormaster in Cherbourg, will get his leg broken. If you choose
plan B, you know Spot will be just fine. And let us suppose you know nothing else. If we suppose all
the unknowns cancel out in such a way that the expected value of B relative to A is otherwise zero, but
Spot tips the balance, then we should pick B. Perhaps Spot gives a reason to choose B, an extremely
weak reason but nonetheless the only reason we have. Lenman would concede the reason part, if we
concede the extremely weak part. Spot cannot weigh in here as a reason in at all the same
straightforward way as he would if his broken leg were the only expected consequence of some action
we contemplated.

Then, we ought to do, not the thing with the best actual consequences, but the thing with the best
foreseeable consequences from the point of view of a rational and conscientious agent. But Lenman
argues that this does not help the consequentialist; for the problem is explaining, from a

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consequentialist point of view, why we should do the subjective right act.

The consequentialist might then adopt a disengaged position; disengaged consequentialism might be
true in spite of the epistemic argument. The disengaged consequentialist would argue that
consequentialism is just a criterion of rightness, and should not be used as a decision-procedure.

Lenman thus provides a non-consequentialist suggestion. Lenman suggests that we should be morally
engaged not by the quite futile project of promoting long-term results but by more local projects and
concerns whereby, recognizing the fact of our epistemic limitations, we seek nonetheless to live
virtuously, with dignity and mutual respect. What matters for theories such as these is the virtues of
character our actions manifest and/or the forms of respect we show for others in acting. When we can
foresee harm to others in the outcome of our actions, we owe them the respect of taking this properly
into account. And we owe it to others also to be adequately conscientious in foreseeing such harm.
Then, as Lenman would argue, while the crimes of Hitler were terrible things, they are not something
we can sensibly raise in discussion of the moral failings or excellences of Richard's conduct.

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