Consequences of Ethics

Consequences of Ethics

The consequences are the effects caused by an action and the quality of these consequences depend on how much good they contain. Motives are the causes and the consequences are the effect. The consequences are defined by various theories, one such is utilitarianism. Utilitarianism evaluates consequences by how much happiness and suffering they contain. The consequence that mattered to every human is pleasure and happiness in the absence of pain and suffering. The good consequences are defined in terms of happiness and suffering. The amount of pleasure and pain created by an action is really good way of showing that some consequences are better or worse than others. Jeremy Bentham described the consequences based on the actions described below.

Intensity of pleasure or pain

Consequence of an action can be good or bad. How intense it is, makes the difference in the effect. E.g., eating a chocolate and eating bitter guard shows the difference in intensity.

The duration

  The duration of pleasure or pain created by an action

differs for stubbing one’s toe and breaking one’s toe.

The certainty or uncertainty

Consequences of an action can be certain or uncertain. E.g. jumping off from a higher building can cause a lot of pain to an individual than jumping onto a giant pillow from the same place.

The Nearness or remoteness

During the time of pleasure or pain nearness or remoteness effect follows an action. e.g. Pleasure of eating ice-cream is immediate, whereas the pleasure produced by winning a chess game is little more remote. They take a little longer to show up results.

The fecundity

Consequence of doing the action is either pleasurable or painful, but how likely the action is to be followed by more pleasure or more pain is an important question.

The purity or impurity of pleasure or pain is the opposite of fecundity. This explains how likely the action is to be followed by the opposite feeling. For example, eating all the chocolate is very pleasurable at first, but it leads to a great deal of pain in the long run which creates a high level of impurity or a low level of purity.

The extent of an action

This refers to the wide effect of an action. Some actions can have an extent numbering in the millions, such as deciding whether to torture a terrorist for life-saving information.

Consequentialism: results-based ethics

A plain and simple definition of consequentialism is, of all the things a person might do at any given moment, the morally right action is the one with the best overall consequences.

Consequentialism is based on two principles:

• • • Whether an act is right or wrong depends only on the results of that act
    • The more good consequences an act produces, the better or more right that act is.

It gives us this guidance when faced with a moral dilemma in which, a person should choose the action that maximises good consequences And it gives this general guidance on how to live: People should live so as to maximise good consequences

Different forms of consequentialism differ over what the good thing is that should be maximised.

Utilitarianism states that people should maximise human welfare or well-being (which they used to call 'utility' - hence the name).

Hedonism states that people should maximise human pleasure.

Other forms of consequentialism take a more subtle approach; for example stating that people should maximise the satisfaction of their fully informed and rational preferences.

In practice people don't assess the ethical consequences of every single act (that's called 'act consequentialism') because they don't have the time.

Instead they use ethical rules that are derived from considering the general consequences of particular types of acts. That is called 'rule consequentialism'.

So, for example, according to rule consequentialism we consider lying to be wrong because we know that in general lying produces bad consequences.

Results-based ethics produces this important conclusion for ethical thinking:

No type of act is inherently wrong - not even murder - it depends on the result of the act

This far-fetched example may make things clearer:

• Suppose that by killing X, an entirely innocent person, we can save the lives of 10 other innocent people
• A consequentialist would say that killing X is justified because it would result in only 1 person dying, rather than 10 people dying
• A non-consequentialist would say it is inherently wrong to murder people and refuse to kill X, even though not killing X leads to the death of 9 more people than killing X

Utilitarianism

The classic form of results-based ethics is called utilitarianism. This says that the ethically right choice in a given situation is the one that produces the most happiness and the least unhappiness for the largest number of people.

The appeal of results-based ethics:

Results-based ethics plays a very large part in everyday life because it is simple and appeals to common sense:

• It seems sensible to base ethics on producing happiness and reducing unhappiness
• It seems sensible to base ethics on the consequences of what we do, since we usually take decisions about what to do by considering what results will be produced
• It seems easy to understand and to be based on common sense

Act consequentialism

Act consequentialism looks at every single moral choice anew. It teaches:

A particular action is morally good only if it produces more overall good than any alternative action.

Good points of act consequentialism: A flexible system

Act consequentialism is flexible and can take account of any set of circumstances, however exceptional.Bad points of act consequentialism: Impractical for real life use:

• while it sounds attractive in theory, it’s a very difficult system to apply to real life moral decisions because:

every moral decision is a completely separate case that must be fully evaluated

individuals must research the consequences of their acts before they can make an ethically sound choice

doing such research is often impracticable, and too costly

the time taken by such research leads to slow decision- making which may itself have bad consequences, and the bad consequences of delay may outweigh the good consequences of making a perfect decision

but where a very serious moral choice has to be made, or in unusual circumstances, individuals may well think hard about the consequences of particular moral choices in this way.

Bad for society:

some people argue that if everyone adopted act consequentialism it would have bad consequences for society in general

this is because it would be difficult to predict the moral decisions that other people would make, and this would lead to great uncertainty about how they would behave

some philosophers also think that it would lead to a collapse of mutual trust in society, as many would fear that prejudice or bias towards family or other groups would more strongly influence moral decisions than if people used general moral rules based on consequentialism fortunately the impracticality of act consequentialism as a general moral process means we don't have to worry much about this.

Rule consequentialism

Rule consequentialism bases moral rules on their consequences. This removes many of the problems of act consequentialism. Rule consequentialism teaches:

• Whether acts are good or bad depends on moral rules

• Moral rules are chosen solely on the basis of their consequences

So, when an individual has a moral choice to make they can ask themselves if there's an appropriate rule to apply and then apply it. The rules that should be adopted are the rules that would produce the best results if they were adopted by most people.

Philosophers express this with greater precision:

• An act is right if and only if it results from the internalization of a set of rules that would maximize good if the overwhelming majority of agents internalized this set of rules

And here's another version:

• An action is morally right if and only if it does not violate the set of rules of behaviour whose general acceptance in the community would have the best consequences--that is, at least as good as any rival set of rules or no rules at all.

Good points of rule consequentialism: Practical and efficient

• Rule consequentialism gets round the practical problems of act consequentialism because the hard work has been done in deriving the rules; individuals don't generally have to carry out difficult research before they can take action
• And because individuals can shortcut their moral decision-making they are much more likely to make decisions in a quick and timely way

Bad points of rule consequentialism: Less flexible

• Because rule consequentialism uses general rules it doesn't always produce the best result in individual cases
• However, those in favour of it argue that it produces more good results considered over a long period than act consequentialism
• One way of dealing with this problem - and one that people use all the time in everyday life - is to apply basic rules, together with a set of variations that cover a wide range of situations. These variations are themselves derived in the same way as the general rules

Other forms of consequentialism Negative Consequentialism

Negative consequentialism is the inverse of ordinary consequentialism. Good actions are the ones that produce the least harm. A person should choose the act that does the least amount of harm to the greatest number of people.

Consider this situation:

A billionaire needs an organ transplant. He says that if he is given the next suitable organ he will fund 1000 hip- replacements a year for 10 years.

Giving him the next available organ means Mr X, who was top of the list, will die - but it also means that thousands of people will be very happy with their new hips.

Consequentialism might be used to argue that Mr X's human rights (and his and his family's happiness) should be ignored, in order to increase the overall amount of human well-being.

To summarize, ethical consciousness originates in the human experience, and is recognized by reason as crucial on the grounds of liberal self-interest. The moral imperative is the basis of human continued existence and wealth. Ethics ought to be viewed in relation to sustaining and augmenting this life experience of peoples around the globe, rather than in relation to any eschatological philosophy.