1 On the Alleged Incoherence of Consequentialism by Robert Mckim and Peter Simpson Joseph Boyle, John Finnis and German Grisez have advanced versions of an argument which, they believe, shows that consequentialism is incoherent. 1 It is incoherent, they contend, because it cannot account for the possibility of making wrong choices. Let us call this argument, for convenience, ACI (argument that consequentialism is incoherent). Finnis and Grisez prefer to talk about proportionalism rather than consequentialism, but this is a terminological matter and makes little deference to the issue. Proportionalism is described by Finnis as the view that one should [compare] the benefits and harms proposed by alternative possible choices (whether the choice be of commitment to rules or ways of life, or of a one-off action), and make that choice which promises to yield a better proportion of benefit to harm than any available alternative choice. 2 He states the ACI as follows: [On] the proportionalist explanations of 'right' and 'wrong', wrong choice would be not merely wrong but unintelligible and, as a choice, impossible. One can choose only what appears to one to be good; but if, as proportionalists claim, (i) 'wrong' entails 'yielding (or promising) less good,' and (ii) there are choices which can be identified as yielding or promising less good than some 1 John Finnis, Fundamentals of Ethics (Washington DC, 1983 ), pp. 89-90; Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus (Chicago, 1983), pp. 48-49, 150, 152-54, 160-61. Joseph Boyle indicated his support for this line of argument in the course of a lecture delivered at the NRH sponsored Summer Institute on the ethical thought of Thomas Aquinas which was organized by Ralph Mclnerny at the University of Notre Dame, June, 1985, and in an unpublished piece entitled Refutation of Consequentialism in Syllogistic Form. Both authors of this article were participants in that Summer Institute. 2 Fundamentals of Ethics, pp. 86-87.
2 alternative choice(s), then it becomes inconceivable that a morally wrong (as distinct from a merely mistaken) choice could ever be made. How could anyone choose an act which he can see yields less good than some alternative open to him? 3 Grisez states something similar to this when he says: "What is perceived as definitely less good or more bad simply cannot be chosen, because one can only choose what appeals to intelligent interest, and that which is seen as being definitely less good or more bad than something else has so appeal. He gives what may be regarded as his reason for this last clause in saying that any reason for choosing the [lesser good, or inferior option] would be a better reason for choosing the [greater good or] superior option. The lesser good ceases to be an object for choice; it simply drop[s] out of consideration. What reason could there be to choose the less good or the more bad? None. 4 The idea then seems to be this. According to proportionalism a wrong choice is one which involves less good than some alternative. But, say the proponents of the ACI, one can choose only what one regards as involving more good than, or at least as much good as, the alternative. Therefore, proportionalists can make no sense of, or account for, the possibility of making wrong choices, at any rate where the person making the choice recognizes that the wrong choice would involve less good than any alternative. What is wrong will this argument? Consider a simple example. Jane is an actutilitarian of a straightforward happiness-maximizing sort, but she also suffers from strong temptations towards selfishness. She believes that she ought to do what will 3 Ibid., p. 89.
3 maximally promote happiness, but she is also strongly disposed to do what is in her own self-interest. Suppose that Jane is faced with a choice between, say, using some money she has to buy a second home and using that money to aid victims of famine in the Third World. The former, let us assume, is the selfish thing to do and the latter the happinessmaximizing thing, and let us also assume that Jane recognizes this to be the case. But suppose that she nevertheless buys the house despite knowing that under these circumstances, according to her own moral theory, she ought not to. Why should this case be impossible for proportionalists to account for? The proponents of the ACI reason as follows. What Jane is recognizing when she sees that her proportionalist moral theory requires her not to buy the house but to use the money to feed the famine-victims, is that this course of action promises to yield more good. She sees that the alternative, buying the house and neglecting the famine-victims, promises to yield less good. But to choose something is to recognize it as involving as much good as, or more good than, the alternative. ( How could anyone choose an act which he can see yields less good than some alternatives open to him? ) Hence, given proportionalism, Jane's choice to buy the house is unintelligible. But this reasoning is defective. It conflates weighing-all-goods with weighing-allgoods-from-all-points-of-view. The former is necessary for proportionalist calculation, but the latter is not, and is probably not even possible. The point is this. The superiority of giving the money to the famine-victims emerges when one views all the goods in the situation from the point of view of impartial benevolence, that is from the point of view of Jane s happiness-maximizing utilitarianism. But buying the house emerges as superior 4 The Way of the Lord Jesus, pp. 150, 152, 153. Boyle states something similar in the unpublished piece referred to in note 1.
4 when all the goods in the situation are viewed from the point of view of Jane's selfishness. Jane can therefore intelligibly choose either course because she is not just faced with one comparison of goods but with two different ones according to the different points of view she can adopt. As a proportionalist Jane can readily say what the morally correct thing to do is, that is, what is the good thing to do from what she takes to be the moral point of view. Given her proportionalist commitments she is also able to say what one ought to do all things considered, or what one ought to do when one has taken into account every aspect of the situation. But the moral point of view is not the only point of view from which she can look at things. And it is not the only point of view from which she can decide how to act. Provided there are reasons why Jane can do things which are distinct from those reasons which are associated with her proportionalist commitment, proportionalism has no difficulty accounting for her choice of an action which she recognizes not to be the morally correct choice, or indeed to be the morally wrong choice. Proportionalism is, however, unable to account for the case where someone makes a wrong (i.e. in this case, non-proportionalist) choice and whose sole reason for action is provided by his or her proportionalist commitments. But then similarly problematic cases can be constructed for any other moral theory. No moral theory (not excepting that adopted by Boyle, Finnis, and Grisez themselves) will be able to account for wrong action by a person whose sole reason for action is provided by the moral theory. if one does do what is wrong that can only be because one has been tempted to judge and act according to some other standard (usually one's selfish interest) instead of the standard counseled by the theory. Wrong action is only possible on the supposition that there is another way of looking at things besides the one provided by the moral
5 theory. Indeed that is what it means to choose to do the wrong thing, namely not to look at things morally in the particular case in question. The proponents of the ACI seem to be supposing that proportionalism does not allow for alternative ways of looking at the goods involved in a situation. But this is clearly false. Proportionalists or consequentialists have never wanted to say that the utility maximizing thing must necessarily make everyone better off absolutely, nor have they wanted to say that it must necessarily make each individual, taken separately, better off than they would have been had they behaved differently. All they have wanted, or needed, to say is that the maximizing action will make the balance of utility, as distributed over all those concerned, greater than any other alternative. But this is compatible with supposing that some alternative might make me, taken on my own, better off. And. that is all that is needed. to account for Jane's case. To conclude. The ACI fails to show consequentialism or proportionalism is incoherent because it is itself a fallacious argument. Consequentialism may indeed in some sense be mistaken; there may even be some sense in which it is incoherent. But if so, the ACI could never establish it.