The Unreliability of Foreseeable Consequences: A Return to the Epistemic Objection

Consequentialists maintain that an act is morally right just in case it produces the best consequences of any available alternative. Because agents are ignorant about some of their acts’ consequences, they cannot be certain about which alternative is best. Kagan (1998) contends that it is reasonable...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ethical theory and moral practice
Main Author: Elgin, Samuel (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Springer Science + Business Media B. V [2015]
In: Ethical theory and moral practice
RelBib Classification:NCA Ethics
VA Philosophy
Further subjects:B Epistemic objection
B Statistics
B Consequentialism
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
Volltext (doi)
Description
Summary:Consequentialists maintain that an act is morally right just in case it produces the best consequences of any available alternative. Because agents are ignorant about some of their acts’ consequences, they cannot be certain about which alternative is best. Kagan (1998) contends that it is reasonable to assume that unforeseen good and bad consequences roughly balance out and can be largely disregarded. A statistical argument demonstrates that Kagan’s assumption is almost always false. An act’s foreseeable consequences are an extremely poor indicator of the goodness of its overall consequences. Acting based on foreseeable consequences is barely more reliably good than acting completely at random.
ISSN:1572-8447
Contains:Enthalten in: Ethical theory and moral practice
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10677-015-9602-8