Alan Hájek, Australia National University :: Consequentialism, Cluelessness, Clumsiness, and Counterfactuals
Wednesday March 13, 2024

Abstract: According to objective consequentialism, a morally right action is one that has the best consequences. (These are not just the immediate consequences of the actions, but the long-term consequences, perhaps until the end of history.) I will argue that on one understanding this makes no sense, and on another understanding, it has a startling metaphysical presupposition concerning counterfactuals. Objective consequentialism has faced various objections, including the problem of “cluelessness”: we have no idea what most of the consequences of our actions will be. I think that on these understandings, objective consequentialism has a far worse problem: its very foundations are highly dubious. Even granting these foundations, a worse problem than cluelessness remains, which I call “clumsiness”. Moreover, I think that these problems quickly generalise to a number of other moral theories. But the point is most easily made for objective consequentialism, so I will focus largely on it.

I will consider three ways that objective consequentialism might be improved:

1) Appeal instead to short-term consequences of actions;

2) Understand consequences with objective probabilities;

3) Understand consequences with subjective/evidential probabilities.

I will argue that 1) still fails, but that 2) and 3) are the best prospects for consequentialism