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    Moore should revise his consequentialism to hold that one... — Carmelics
    Home/Consequentialism
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    Moore should revise his consequentialism to hold that one ought to do the action one has reason to believe will produce the best consequences, rather than the action that actually will produce the best consequences.

    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Moore's moral conservatism is only consistent with a standard of subjective or epistemic best consequences, not objective best consequences.
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    • 2.One may have reason to think that conforming to established moral rules will have the best consequences even when one knows this will not always be true.
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    • 3.Adopting the epistemic standard resolves the contradiction between Moore's consequentialism and his moral conservatism.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.An agent's epistemic limitations can themselves be morally culpable, so 'reason to believe' cannot fully discharge the agent's objective moral responsibility.
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    • 2.Moore's objective consequentialism preserves the action-guiding distinction between what one ought ideally to do and what one is blameworthy for failing to do, which the epistemic revision collapses.
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    • 3.Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics demonstrates that objective and subjective 'ought' claims serve distinct deliberative roles, neither of which can substitute for the other without theoretical loss.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Russell's proposed revision conflates the standard for right action with the standard for rational or praiseworthy action, a distinction central to act-consequentialist theory since Railton's 1984 account of sophisticated consequentialism.
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    • 2.Moore's moral conservatism is more parsimoniously reconciled by indirect consequentialism—rule-following maximizes expected utility—without abandoning the objective criterion of actual best consequences.
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    Topics

    Consequentialism

    Key Terms

    Have reason to believe(as related to knowledge and uncertainty)
    Have evidence or logical grounds to think something is true, even if you can't be completely certain about it.
    Moore(Moore's proof refers to his famous argument for the existence of external objects)
    G.E. Moore was an influential 20th-century philosopher known for defending common sense claims (like 'this is a hand') against skeptical arguments that doubt what we can know about the world.
    consequences(Contested definition within consequentialist theory)
    Future events caused by an act, where the scope depends on which notion of causation is used — either restricted to proximate effects or extended to all upshots for which the act is a causally necessary condition.
    consequentialism(Applied to terrorism and legal punishment)
    The view that practices are judged solely by their consequences, such that a practice is wrong only if it has bad consequences on balance.
    ought(Deontic logic and normative theory)
    A strict (all-or-nothing) deontic modal, treated as a propositional operator

    Related

    Adopting the epistemic standard resolves the contradiction between Moore's conse...An agent's epistemic limitations can themselves be morally culpable, so 'reason ...Moore's moral conservatism is more parsimoniously reconciled by indirect consequ...Moore's moral conservatism is only consistent with a standard of subjective or e...
    +4 moreShow less
    Moore's objective consequentialism preserves the action-guiding distinction betw...One may have reason to think that conforming to established moral rules will hav...

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: russell-moral
    View source passageHide passage
    But the fact that these claims are not synonymous does not show that it is false that I ought to do that act which will, in fact, produce the best consequences. The latter claim could be synthetic (or, as Russell would have it, “significant”) but true. Why does Russell think it false? Russell raises the ad hominem objection that Moore’s thesis is flatly inconsistent with the moral conservatism that he goes on to embrace. According to Moore, although “there are cases where [an established moral]
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Russell's proposed revision conflates the standard for right action with the sta...
    Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics demonstrates that objective and subjective 'ought' ...

    Similar

    Moore's brand of consequentialism (the view that the right action is a...87%Moore's brand of consequentialism holds that the right action is alway...86%Proximate consequentialism holds that the moral rightness of an act is...81%Under consequentialism, a practice is wrong only if it has bad consequ...81%
    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit