Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: According to Act Consequentialism, an act is right if and only if its outcome is not worse than the outcome of any alternative to that act. This view, however, leads to deontic paradoxes if the alternatives to an act are all other acts that can be done in the situation. A typical response is to only apply this rightness criterion to maximally specific acts and to take the alternatives to a maximally specific act to be the other maximally specific acts that can be done in the situation. (This view can then be supplanted by a separate account for the rightness of acts that are not maximally specific.) This paper defends a rival view, Binary Act Consequentialism, where, for any voluntary act, that act is right if and only if its outcome is not worse than the outcome of not doing that act. Binary Act Consequentialism, which dates back to Jeremy Bentham, has few supporters. A number of seemingly powerful objections have been considered fatal. In this paper, I rebut these objections and put forward a positive argument for the view.
Source: Philosophical Studies
Author: Johan E. Gustafsson
Institutions: University of York, The University of Texas at Austin
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,090
Funder: Musk Foundation
OpenAlex ID: W4402314095