Objective consequentialism and the plurality of chances
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Objective consequentialism and the plurality of chances Leszek Wronski ´ 1 Received: 21 February 2020 / Accepted: 25 August 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract I claim that objective consequentialism (OC) faces a problem stemming from the existence in some situations of a plurality of chances relevant to the outcomes of an agent’s acts. I suggest that this phenomenon bears structural resemblance to the wellknown Reference Class problem. I outline a few ways in which one could attempt to deal with the issue, suggesting that it is the higher-level chance that should be employed by OC. Keywords Objective consequentialism · Reference class problem · Chance · Probability A moral philosopher may totally bypass any concern with logic, without detriment to his thinking. (Mohanty 1999, p. 79)
1 Introduction Objective consequentialism (OC), the approach to ethics according to which ’the primary notion for moral theory is given by what is best (or (…) has greatest objective value) regardless of how things seem to the agent’ (Oddie and Menzies 1992, p. 512) and ’the correct regulative ideal for the moral agent is that of maximising objective value’ (ibid., p. 513), has been criticised in a number of familiar ways. Perhaps the best point of departure is Lenman (2000), where probably the most immediate objection to the OC, stemming from the obvious intuition about the difficulty of predicting the future, is discussed. In this paper I will present what I believe to be a hitherto overlooked problem the OC needs to face. It is somewhat similar in spirit to that posed by situations in which ’there is no fact of the matter about whether things will turn out well or badly if we do one thing or another’ (Hare 2011, p. 199); however, in the
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Leszek Wro´nski [email protected] Institute of Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy, Jagiellonian University, Grodzka 52, 31-044 Krakow, Poland
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cases described below it seems there are too many relevant facts, pulling our ethical reasoning in conflicting directions. The main idea I want to propose is that the objective variant of consequentialism faces an issue which is somewhat structurally similar to the well-known reference class problem, and that to this issue no clearly best solution presents itself. In a nutshell, one reading of the classical reference class problem takes it to be generated by the fact that an individual can be classified as belonging to various sets, and so where one is looking for a single probability value one finds a multitude of them instead. Modern philosophy of science takes seriously the idea of chance plurality, that is, that some propositions have, at a fixed moment in a fixed world, more than one chance value. In situations displaying chance plurality, one and the same proposition may have various chances—fundamental and higher-level ones. This might lead to objective consequentialism imposing contradictory obligations on some agents in some situations. While in my opinion accepting this should be seriously considered, I will suggest that
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