Stardate 20021221.1933

(Captain's log): Sheesh, we sure get into some esoteric things around here. In a post a couple of days ago, Ian Wood made a comment about consequentialism and I responded by saying that I didn't think that the consequences of an act were the sole basis for judging its ethical value, because relying solely on that could lead you into ethical traps.

Harry wrote in to say:

What complications arise from a strictly consequentialist view of morality? Are we talking about the old "ends does not justify the means" kind of thing? I think if that is the case, if you look at the times that phrase is applied, it is used incorrectly, or rather inaccurately.

I responded:

At least one problem is that a strict consequentialist can't be expected to stick to a deal he's made when it turns out that he made a bad one. He would then judge, on a strict basis of consequences, that better result would be had by breaking his word. The negative value of that would be considered to be offset by the positive value of being able to change course and the consequences of doing so.

Which, as a practical matter, means that no contract or treaty or bargain is really possible with a strict consequentialist.

Harry replied:

Sorry no. Breaking your word has negative consequences as well. While there are certain times when it may be impossible to keep one's word, (British promise to France of fighter aircraft prior to the Battle of Britain comes readily to mind) if you want people to trust you, you have to have a reputation for being trustworthy. You lose that reputation, you change the situation to one in which you do not get trusted, you do not get the contracts, or treaties, with all the associated economic and political fallout from that.

There may be a short term gain, however it is offset by the long term loss of credibility and trustworthiness. The fact that no one wants anything to do with you, because you are too fickle. That is the consequences of that kind of action.

I wrote a reply to him but I wanted to expand it and rephrase it. This was all analyzed quite a long time ago by philosophers as part of the reaction to Bentham and Mill when they proposed utilitarianism as a way of constructing a rational and valid ethical system without any kind of reference to a deity, in part because both of them were atheists and mechanists. They weren't the first to try to do this, by a very long margin. Epicurus constructed such a system in the 3rd century BC, albeit it was what we'd now think of as "agnostic" rather than "atheistic". But though they weren't the first, Bentham and Mill's proposal was far better than any of the previous ones, and there's much to like about it. It was an attempt to produce a rigorous version of impersonal hedonism. There are two pieces to utilitarianism:

First, there's an axiomatic statement that happiness (mine and everyone else's) is a worthwhile goal. They used the term "pleasure" but that has connotations now which distort the meaning, and "happiness" is a better term for it. That comes from impersonal hedonism.

There was also a claim that the best way to achieve the greatest amount of happiness was to take a strict consequentialist approach to making ethical decisions. What that meant was that in any given situation, you should evaluate all the choices available to you and select the one which would best advance the cause of the axiom, by creating the greatest amount of happiness.

I don't recall that anyone made any fundamental objections to the axiom, but by their nature one cannot argue about axioms unless it's possible to produce empirical data proving them wrong, which isn't possible when what you're doing is to base value judgments on the axiom.

On the other hand, the consequentialist aspect of Utilitarianism came in for a great deal of evaluation. It's not necessarily the case that all consequentialism must serve the axiom of increasing happiness, but the objections which were raised to consequentialism also don't require that axiom.

The problem of what amounts to "honor" is that a pure utilitarian has none, in the sense that the term is usually used. He only honors his commitments when he knows someone is watching. Since the ethical consequences of keeping his word are solely based on whether someone else finds out that he didn't and then reacts negatively, then if he breaks his word and no one ever finds out, there are no negative consequences and thus it does not affect his ethical calculation.

There was a classic formulation of a thought problem on this, which went as follows:

John and Jeremy are out exploring Antarctica and get into trouble and run low on food. There isn't enough for them to both get back. John is a utilitarian, and both of them have sons back home. Jeremy tells John that Jeremy will commit suicide if John promises to send Jeremy's son to college, even though they both know that this means John won't be able to send his own son to college. John agrees, Jeremy kills himself, John survives and returns home.

It turns out that Jeremy's son is a dullard on which a college education will be wasted. He'll flunk out or get a degree in postmodernist literary theory and then spend the rest of his life working as a waiter in a restaurant, which is what he'd do even if he didn't attend college. John's son, on the other hand,