The Concept Of Consequentialism

The theories and ideals shared among consequentialists are by no means to be scrapped; philosophical theories are theories, not prescriptions. While they do all make an attempt to describe a solution to various moral conundrums, one can not forget that validity is shared among theories. Holes may seem larger in certain standards and ideals, but these holes are never refutable and should be used to create a larger discourse between philosophical theories. Consequentialism and all it’s sub-groups (direct, universal, hedonism, aggregative, evaluative, maximizing, etc.) are based around two dominant principles: For an act to be in the right or wrong one must look solely to the results of the act, and subsequently second, the more net-good produced

People find pleasure in others pain, people can wrongfully but sincerely decide that a two-minute pleasure outweighs the stable happiness they could’ve had for the next several years, and is the satisfaction of desire what brings about true happiness? These questions and variances are real and without definite answer, yet the consequentialist assumes more than is there and ignores the ever important value of the individual’s preference towards specific pleasures and pains. However, even among the consequential community there is a heavy disagreement about just what and what not a consequentialist is to base judgments from, excluding the obvious that is it should be action-based. Act consequentialism looks at every single moral choice anew. In a situation where an extremely serious moral choice is bound to be made, individuals may well think long about the consequences of particular moral choices in this way. Such deliberate thought is hugely useful for such occurrences, but when applied to the much more trivial choices that make up the large majority or our days and weeks actually serves as a deterrent from being a decisive human and, thus leads to a less valuable life: If these act consequentialists were everywhere, individuals would feel morally obligated to research the consequences of their actions before they take them to make an

Kant’s deontology fits more naturally with conventional notions of our own moral duty in the world and seeing each situation as one that particularly pertains to the individual it’s involving and the world he/she is affecting. I see this sense of purpose stemming from a similar place the supreme “good” could be found. Just how virtuous and morally upright anyone is will often be reflected in their actions, but not based only by these actions. For those that feel this way one can imagine a sense of pride arises when doing the right thing; they acted from within themselves rather than as a do-good-robot-consequentialist might achieve an identical morale decision, but from a series of almost mechanical pleasure minus pain calculations. Our world is complex, but people are the real complexity and a consequentialist is not respecting the beauty of the human mind and soul when he judges one purely based on their physical