2018-03-06-consequentialism-promotion.md 5.6 KB
layout: post title: "Consequentialism vs its promotion" date: 2018-03-06 11:00:22
categories: philosophy
This post presents a sketch for an "almost mathematical" proof that promoting consequentialism is in fact against consequentialism. By no means i suggest that this thought is original, but i haven't stumbled upon it in such formulation.
by Gödel's incompleteness theorems and related mathematical proofs, one can conclude that no consequentialist can actually correctly predict the results of their actions (if that alone is considered sufficient to destruct the whole concept of consequentialism, then there's no point in further discussing it; further argument assumes consequentialist who supposes they can make meaningful decisions in most situations)
consequentialism is widely famous for the "ends justify means" approach (even though it can be argued that it doesn't follow from it in a relevant way), which is a moral basis for virtually all large scale violence (such as wars and terrorism); even among the more intellectual consequentialists, many are likely to use wrong (i.e. not your favourite) version of consequentialism and possibly bring about less good than they'd do otherwise (if they wouldn't be consequentialists at all)
promoting consequentialism doesn't seem to bring about much good in any obvious way, full calculation is impossible and it does seem to bring bad; thus it should not be promoted
Now i wonder if this explains why certain consequentialists do not widely publish their works and keep them in highbrow journals behind the paywall: they might agree with this argument about spreading consequentialism, but consider that convincing other consequentialists of what is "true consequentialism" is worthwhile.
There are of course possible rebuttals to this argument, most likely devided into three main categories (i hope nobody would seriously argue possibility of full computation):
"what you claim to be bad consequences are not actually that bad (or not bad at all)"
"the link between promoting consequentialism and those bad consequences is not as strong as you suppose"
"you have underestimated the good that promoting consequentialism does"
Of these three arguments, i would dismiss first on the basis of lack of ability to predict accurately (i can see how consequentialist can justify some specific case of mass killing of innocents, but not promotion of large scale violence in abstract).
Third argument is not so easy to dismiss, since it can be argued that promoting consequentialism is necessary to help people overcome the state of being "naive consequentialists" and become a "true consequentialist", whatever that should mean. If someone can honestly believe that, i can agree that it's a valid argument. More on that below.
Second argument sounds like the strongest of the three. Indeed, the link might sound weak. And of course, i've got no proofs for it, but it seems to me that many works of pop culture that promote straightforward application of "means justify ends" rule are influenced by consequentialist thought. People who would otherwise think twice before promoting something that goes against conventional ethics, might conclude that since consequentialism is so popular even among ethic philosophers, it might as well be right (in their own convenient interpretation, of course). The similar claim goes for authorities: consequentialism (sometimes in less primitive forms, sometimes more) seems to be always central moral reference basis for acts that can be considered bad by more sophisticated consequentialists.
Now a reader with a deeper understanding of consequentialism can raise an objection: what if spreading consequentialism is actually good not because of some delayed effects, but because it has some end value? And indeed, it is probably possible to build consequentialist system that values someone's spreading of ideas more than lives of those who can be indirect victims of such spreading. And i don't think true consequentialist should feel much irony about that previous statement.
Now readers might be confused that after three categories of rebuttals i present yet another one. Keep calm, this is not a structured scientific essay. As a matter of fact, i'm going to return to the "third" category of rebuttals and specifically one interesting argument. I hope even <censored by utilitarian editor> will understand why i'm placing it last.
The argument (in a somewhat sarcastic form, as you may guess) goes as following:
many consequentialists advocate and promote consequentialism
most of them have wrong understanding of consequentialism (either due to wrong base values, or because of incorrect application of instrumental reasoning)
hence we should promote the true version of consequentialism to avert the damage by our colleagues
What is most interesting here is of course not the offscreen laughing of a certain famous ghost, but the fact that even the math so advocated by many consequentialists does not help (and due to issues with Laplace's daemon construction will never be able to). Prisoner's dilemma analysis for unlimited iterations does suggest that one should start with being nice, but it's a game for two. In a world of at the very least thousands of non-banal consequentialists (and billions of regular actors) there is no way to apply its lessons.
Perhaps it is worth ending this article with a banal advice: if you really can't help promoting consequentialism, do it in a smart way. Make sure that your readers go beyond basic definition and actually understand that killing people is not justified by the word of their boss, chaplain and officer in command.