Philosophers inquire. They do not (or at least should not) avoid difficult questions, unless there is good reason to do so. As a philosopher, I find that the COVID-19 pandemic raises important questions of moral philosophy. In what follows, I will examine one. Should our response to the pandemic be guided by consequentialist reasoning? I will suggest a negative answer.
Consequentialism is the position that the only factor which morally justifies an act is its results. In other words, the moral rightness or wrongness of an act is fixed solely by its outcome; the consequence of an act makes the act right or wrong.[i] If the outcome of an act is beneficial, then the act is justified: the end justifies the means. The main versions of consequentialism are utilitarianism and moral egoism. Utilitarianism is the view that, in any moral situation, the right act is the one which will lead (or tend to lead) to the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people.[ii] On moral egoism, one ought to behave in ways which maximize the best outcomes for oneself and let others do the same. Philosophers who deny consequentialism are called non-consequentialists.
Utilitarianism is a popular view of morality. Prima facie, the idea is attractive and easy to understand: satisfy desire for as many people as possible. After all, we intuitively grasp the idea of desire-satisfaction. And who doesn’t want to maximize his own satisfaction, anyway? But there are significant objections to consequentialism in general, and to utilitarianism in particular. As David Oderberg puts it:
I have given a number of fairly abstract reasons why consequentialism is on the face of it unintuitive and unmotivated. But I also think it is straight out false, and not only false but an evil and dangerous theory – a view I am not alone in holding. There are a number of ways in which I could defend the view, but I want to focus on one in particular, …This is the charge that consequentialism allows, indeed requires, certain kinds of action that are obviously wrong and so not to be done. In particular, consequentialism permits and requires actions that are horrendous evils, as evil as anything can be… In general, according to consequentialism, it is at least permitted, often obligatory, for a person to commit what looks to any sane observer like a blatant and serious violation of someone else’s rights, and hence to commit an act of grave injustice, in order to maximize value, or at least to do what he thinks is likely to maximize value. Now, for the non-consequentialist, no intuition his opponent can bring to bear in support of the consequentialist position on this matter is as strong as the intuition that such apparent injustices are indeed injustices, and so to be forbidden on all occasions, no matter what the consequences.
SOURCE: Christian Post, Elliott Crozat
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