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Consequentialism Defined
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This lecture notes discusses the meaning and key concepts in Consequentialist Ethics.
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Consequentialism DefinedConsequentialism is an ethical doctrine which holds the belief that the morality, that is,
the rightness or wrongness, of a human act depends on its consequence. The most
famous type of consequentialism is utilitarianism. As is well known, in utilitarianism, the
basis of the morality of human acts are the consequent benefits that the act brings to
many people concerned. In fact, for the utilitarian, an act is morally right if it produces
greatest happiness to the greatest number of people, and morally wrong if it produces
more pain than happiness to the greatest number of people concerned.
Because in consequentialism the morality of a human act is judged based on its
consequence, this type of ethics, therefore, is non-prescriptive. Hence, if a deontologist
says “We should not lie because it is always morally wrong to lie”, a consequentialist
says “It is morally right to lie if doing so would produce a good outcome or
consequence”. One good example would be a physician lying outrightly to a patient with
stage 4 lung cancer who is also having a cardiac condition. Obviously, for the
consequentialist, if the physician would outrightly tell the patient with a cardiac
condition about her real medical condition, then it may hasten the death of the patient.
Other famous types of consequentialism are ethical egoism and ethical altruism. On the
one hand, ethical egoism puts more emphasis on the idea that one ought to act in such
a way that it maximizes or serves one’s self-interest. On the other hand, ethical altruism
mandates that we ought to take actions that have maximum benefits for everyone
except for oneself.
As we can see, consequentialism is one of the types of ethical doctrine that supports the
idea that it is the end that justifies the means. As a matter of fact, consequentialism
permits that the end justifies the means even if the means used is problematic.
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