Guay

A REFUTATION OF CONSEQUENTIALISM
Author(s): ROBERT GUAY

Source: Metaphilosophy, Vol. 36, No. 3 (April 2005), pp. 348-362
Published by: Wiley
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© Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005.
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK, and
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METAPHILOSOPHY
Vol. 36, No. 3, April 2005
0026-1068
A REFUTATION OF CONSEQUENTIALISM
ROBERT GUAY
Abstract: This article argues that consequentialism does not work as

hensive theory of right action. The argument is that what course
maximizes the good makes sense only within a particular context, bu
impossible to supply such a context while adhering to a global cons
requirement. A global consistency requirement merely specifies the d
maximization: it insists that an individual action, in order to be mor
must be optimific relative not only to a set of temporally and spa
alternatives but also to all future possibilities that the action would p
further argue that an appropriate context is impossible to provide b
consequentialism invokes incompatible temporal horizons, that of action
of a maximizable good. The incompatibility between these two horizon
impossible for there to be any morally salient, consistent assignm
sequences to actions, and thus renders act consequentialism empty.
Keywords: consequentialism, utilitarianism, integrity, ethics.
"You want things to happen without being involved in them."

—Anka, in Krzystof Kieslcwski, Decalogue
The thesis of this article is that consequentialism does not work as a

comprehensive theory of right action. I do not offer a typical refutation,
in that I do not claim that consequentialism is self-contradictory. One can
with perfect consistency claim that the good is prior to the right and
that the right consists in maximizing the good. What I claim, however, is
that it is senseless to make such a claim. In particular, I attempt to show
that the notion of what course of action maximizes the good has no
content within a consequentialist framework.
Since the problem that I identify rests with maximization, this refuta
tion does not cut across the act/rule distinction. If rule consequentialism
holds that there are occasions on which one should follow a rule rather
than violate the rule in an optimific way, then it is not maximizing and my
arguments do not apply; if not, then it collapses into act consequential
© Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005
A REFUTATION OF CONSEQUENTIALISM 349
ism. I have nothing to say about nonmaximizing forms of consequenti

alism.1 This refutation does, however, cut across the direct/indirect
distinction.2 It makes no difference whether we take consequentialism
as offering a principle of decision, or a standard of right. Presumably the
former would be parasitic upon the latter for its legitimacy.
The argument that I shall present is that what course of action
maximizes the good makes sense only within a particular context, but
that it is impossible to supply such a context while adhering to what I call
a "global consistency requirement." A global consistency requirement
merely specifies the demand for maximization: it insists only that an
individual action, in order to be morally right, must be optimific relative
not only to a set of temporally and spatially local alternatives but also to
all future possibilities that the action would preclude. I further argue that
an appropriate context is impossible to provide because act consequenti
alism invokes incompatible temporal horizons, that of action and that of
a maximizable good. The incompatibility between these two horizons
makes it impossible for there to be any morally salient, consistent
assignment of consequences to actions, and thus renders act consequen
tialism empty.
What follows in section 2 below is a presentation and elaboration of
the main arguments: that a context must be supplied, but that it is
impossible to do so. Section 3 is an attempt to close off some garden paths
away from my refutation, and to explain why what might seem to be a
hairsplitting objection nevertheless reveals something deeply significant.
Consequentialism demands optimization. It is not enough to make

everyone better off, with whatever meaning one assigns to this phrase.
The very best possible outcome must come to pass; otherwise the
antecedent action is morally defective.3 Presumably, then, it is not enough
for each individual action to be optimific relative to its contemporaneous
alternatives. That is, it seems possible that a series of optimific actions
could produce a worse outcome than an entirely different, incompatible
sequence of actions. A consequentialist theory of right action is thus
1 On the relation between act- and rule- (or motive-) consequentialism, cf. Lyons 1965.
My refutation also fails to apply to more exotic forms of nonmaximizing consequentialism,
such as Michael Slote's "satisficing" consequentialism. I suspect, however, that any
nonmaximizing consequentialism either imports nonconsequentialist considerations or is
unstable: if only the good is of moral significance, it is not clear how stopping short of
optimality can be justified.
2 On this distinction, cf. Railton 1984. In that article, however, Railton uses the terms
subjective and objective.
3 I intend "best possible" to be compatible with either an expected outcome or an actual
outcome gloss: it does not matter for present purposes if "best possible" is assessed before or
after the fact.
350 ROBERT GUAY
subject to what might be called a global consistency requirement: that

present right action cannot preclude a remotely available course of acti
with an even better outcome or outcomes. 1 call it a consistency
requirement merely to emphasize that the range of outcomes relevant
to assessment cannot be arbitrarily restricted.
We can imagine situations in which, at various intervals, one does the
very best that one can but still falls into a terrible and avoidable mess:
starting down the wrong path may have very distant, but very dire,
consequences. Such situations illustrate the distinction between tactics, in
which available means are employed to achieve immediate ends, and
strategy, in which seemingly indirect routes are the best means to achieve
long-range ends. An analogous situation arises in the Prisoner's Di
lemma. There of course the inconsistency between suboptimal outcome
and seemingly optimific actions stems from the interpersonal feature of
the situation, rather than a temporal feature. But either way, a poor
outcome could be the result of apparently correct actions. Against this, a
global consistency requirement insists that an action must be not only
tactically correct but also compatible with what is strategically optimific.
Of course, one can say that tactical actions are not in fact optimific
when they conflict with a better strategy; the agent ideally, with perfect
knowledge of present and future contingencies and ability to coordinate
with others, would take all strategic possibilities into account. But this
would just be to say that global consistency is an ineliminable component
of consequentialism. In any case, whatever the relation between global
consistency and consequentialism, it is nonetheless hard to see how
consequentialism could sanction the actions that lead to a suboptimal
outcome.4 To do so would categorically privilege action in a way that
qualifies the moral import of the good. If reasons for action in a specified
context were the matter to be evaluated, then there would perhaps be
some leeway to limit the scope of examination to the tactical possibilities
available in a particular situation. But this cannot be the case with a
consequentialist standard of right. The best possible outcome must serve
as the rigid moral touchstone.
This should provoke one early question: When is the best outcome?
Apart from a Day of Reckoning, causal chains do not simply come to an
end. Our short-term actions sometimes have long-term or long-distance
effects, so to measure the consequences of our actions, we need to specify
a finish line. Not all finish lines are the same: it is of course generally not
4 I say "lead" here, but I could just as easily have said "led": I know of no decisive
considerations in favor of either ex ante or ex post facto evaluation. I think that most writers
take it for granted that agents are to be judged by the actual outcome, but, especially in
arguments tied to notions of rationality, it seems just as plausible to claim that agents are to
be assessed on the basis of what is most likely to produce the best outcome. Of course,
versions of consequentialism that then incorporate probabilistic calculations into their very
standard do not have as readily available the claim to represent a certain sort of naturalism.
the case that the best outcome with respect to time t is compatible with the
best outcome with respect to any other time. A great achievement in the
future might be possible only at the expense of our immediate good; sloth
might be the best we can hope for tomorrow and the day after but be
incompatible with something better next year. Even if we measure the
good in a manner similar to that recommended by Bentham, as accumu
lating over time as the product of intensity and duration, the same
incompatibility arises. One path to take might leave us better off in
the long run but not catch up with an alternative until very, very far in the
future. And one cannot simply say that one should always look to the
long run, because the long run has no end; that would leave the moral
assessment of our actions infinitely deferred. But I leave this aside for
now, because it is the sort of thing that can be answered by stipulation,
however arbitrarily.
My main contentions are that the question of what course of action
maximizes the good only makes sense within a particular context, and
that this context is impossible to supply while adhering to the global
consistency requirement. If both of these contentions are true, then any
consequentialist theory of right action that adheres to the global con
sistency requirement is without content. My complaint is not an epistemic
one, that we can never have access to every bit of morally relevant
information. My complaint is more fundamental: there must in principle
be some means of specifying the relevant context, but there is not.
A particular context must be supplied because of the modality present
in any sane version of consequentialism: "best feasible state of affairs"
(Sen 1979, 466), "best available outcome" (Scheffler 1982, 2), or some
thing similar. Without these modalities, of course, universal recrimination
and omnipotent beings are brought into morals: moralists would dream
of the best of all possible worlds and constantly censure us for our merely
mortal powers. Normative moral theory should have some claim to be
action guiding, and this is only the case if right conduct is located
somewhere within the realm of possibility. This requires that assessment
take place within a particular context, so that some sense can be given to
what "the possible" consists in.
This need is usually obscured because most discussions of consequen
tialism take place with a starkly drawn choice situation in place.
Consequentialism has always invoked very powerful, primal tropes in
presenting its case: a fork in the road, a train with two tracks, telling the
truth or lying, staying or leaving. There is one binary decision to make,
one action, one clear set of consequences that would flow from that action.
This places clear boundaries on the structure of assessment, and these
boundaries serve to determine the content of consequentialist demands.
The problem with these specifications of context is that they seem to
create a scope restriction that runs counter to the global consistency
requirement. If we expect consequentialist theory to go beyond thought
352 ROBERT GUAY
experiments and into actual assessment, then there are epistem

problems as well. But more fundamentally, the very restr
assessment to what is optimific in a particular choice situation
relativize the assessment to that particular specification of cont
not adequate merely to depict a situation as one in which the op
to shoot or not, and the consequences are judged by the light
shooter or the shot five minutes hence. The possibilities of act
identified might be inconsistent with another possibility, outs
situation, that would produce an even better outcome; the con
belonging to the available courses of action might be too short
neglecting to account for the deeper repercussions.
It might seem that a theory of relevant alternatives that identif
salient options for an agent could provide assistance here. But at an
it is hard to see how such a theory could be both substantial and
legitimate. There seem to be only two grounds for restricting alternatives:
that something is causally unavailable and that it results in a suboptimal
outcome. Of course, one could offer a substantial theory of relevant
alternatives all the same, but it would require the introduction and defense
of some additional criterion of moral significance along with an account of
the relative priority of the new criterion to maximization; a very different
sort of moral theory would then be on offer. One virtue often claimed for
consequentialism is that it counts particular attachments for no more than
they merit in moral assessment. But the considerations usually adduced to
explain what consequentialism would demand are just as parochial as it
would be to look only to one's family members in deciding who gets the
last parachute. So some specification of context seems necessary in order
to flesh out the demands of consequentialism, but the mere specification
seems to place an unjustifiable limitation on assessment.
A way to specify context that is compatible with the global consistency
requirement would remedy this problem. It certainly seems as if such
specification should be possible. After all, the most important context for
moral assessment is generally not one contrived from the literature but
rather one here, now. And there should be at least in principle some way
of illuminating this that does not predetermine the choice situation to be
incompatible with the best possible outcome. By artificially describing a
situation as presenting an agent with limited options (shoot, don't shoot),
each of which has a certain, immediate result, it is perhaps possible to
obscure aspects of the causal picture that might permit a different path to
a better outcome. But an objective, veridical description should not be
incompatible with global consistency. The only way for a contextualiza
tion to go wrong is if as presented it seems to demand an action that
would preclude an even better choice situation in the future (or at the
same time). So as long as the contextualization that informs moral
assessment is compatible with every concurrent or possible future con
textualization that would lead to a better outcome, then there is no
problem with global consistency. And it seems that this should be at least
theoretically possible.
But it is not. If all contexts could be broken down into discrete,
nonoverlapping units, then it should be possible to satisfy the global
consistency requirement. What-is-the-case-at-a-particular-instant is, ob
viously, such a unit, and seems a good candidate to serve as context. But
what needs to be determined here is the context of possible action, and
this is not instantaneous. The context in which an action takes place is one
of motives, ends, and intentions. One can dispute the extent to which
these things are essential to action, but to describe an action as such one
must attribute some intentional content to it. That is, to be an instance of
someone doing something rather than something happening to someone,
an occurrence must be a purposive response to the environment. The
vocabulary of intention is not eliminable and incorporates elements that
occur or obtain not at specific instants but rather in temporally indeter
minate situations, usually only apparent retrospectively, that persist over
short periods of time without clear boundaries. The "instant" of action is
one of a single choice, or a single decision; one cannot do anything in an
infinitesimal amount of time. The contexts of possible actions accordingly
overlap in many and indeterminate ways, at odds with global consistency.
It is not as a natural event analogous with one billiard ball striking
another that an action is significant as such. At a bare minimum, action
involves a certain sort of self-relation, an agent with some at least
potential self-awareness directing his or her activity. Action is reflexive,
involving someone being engaged in what he or she is doing, but this sort
of relation is precisely what consequentialism is bad at dealing with.
Because what consequentialism recognizes as morally salient is the
relative worth of outcome A as compared to outcome B, while never
considering how you get to A or B, it has no means to deal with relations
that endure over time. This is so even in the limiting case of outcome, in
which it is the complete history of everything since the action under
assessment: nothing about the ongoing processes can count, all that can
be relevant is one history as a whole versus other complete histories. This
lack of means to recognize the significance of relations that endure over
time is why consequentialism is famously bad at recognizing the moral
significance of justice, of promises, and of personal attachments. But this
lack is important at present because in consequentialism's offering itself
as a theory of right action, that is precisely what is required of it.
My claim is not that consequentialism, to be valid, must be compatible
with some theory of practical reason. My claim is that insofar as
consequentialism offers itself as a theory of right action, it must be able
to incorporate theoretically something recognizable as action—and this is
not the case. It is not the case because actions are extraneous to the only
things that consequentialism concerns itself with: the best possible out
come, and the causal link thereto. A notion of action with any substance
354 ROBERT GUAY
at all just gets in the way of the causal path to the desired outcom
agent must have some involvement in what she is doing; other
movements are something less than the scratching of an itch,
recognizably moral matter. This involvement must at a minimum r
some sense of the situation, and some sense of oneself as alter
situation. And making sense of things is always diachronic an
while any notion of the good compatible with maximization is s
global: it has to provide a snapshot of everything of any rele
Another way of putting this is that action is holist, incorporating
of oneself in the world, but the only notion of justification that
consequentialism permits is atomist, because that outcome is better
than any other possibly concurrent outcome. There is no atomist theory
of action; therefore there is no atomist theory of right action.
This formulation of the tensions internal to consequentialism might seem

contrived, but it brings out a very deep strain. The strain arises because
consequentialism disrupts the normal relation between assessment and
action. The two are normally entangled: action is in itself forward
looking, and assessment is itself a purposive undertaking. Actions are
not random movements, and they express evaluations about both means
and ends. An assessment is something that has to be done and presum
ably, when carried out, has a point to it: usually, to guide future conduct.
But consequentialism radically separates the two, so that action is nothing
more than an outcome's point of causal origination, and assessment is so
estranged from any particular practical situation that it is unclear how it
could become engaged with guiding action. There are no deliberative
standards for action, since all assessment, rather than informing parti
cular choices, is in terms of a universal project of beneficence. Never
theless, for consequentialism to serve as practical philosophy, the two
must be capable at least in principle of being brought back together.
The move to indirect consequentialism is the usual solution to this
problem. Since it might not be optimific always to act on consequentialist
grounds, what might seem like the natural candidate for the relationship
between assessment and action is obviously objectionable, on pain of
consistency. So the claim is made that consequentialism offers not a
principle of choice but a standard of right: that is to say, it severs the issue
of how to decide from philosophical ethics. But separating off this issue
does not address the more fundamental problem. The standard must be at
least potentially applicable, but there is no way to fill in its content
without contextual references that would contravene global consistency.
What the move to indirectness glosses over is that even if consequenti
alism merely sets a standard, it must be theoretically possible for some
assessment to take place sometime. But if there is no way to specify
A REFUTATION OF CONSEQUENTIAL1SM 355
context compatible with global consistency, then there is no consistent

assignment of possible actions to possible consequences, and accordingly
consequentialist theories of right action are either local or empty.
It might be tempting for the consequentialist to drop the global
consistency requirement, but it would be very costly for her to do so.
The justification of consequentialism has typically been faute de mieux:
nothing can possibly justify bringing about an outcome worse than the
optimal one. In particular, it would be obviously irrational to take up a
course of action that promoted a suboptimal outcome; a notion of the good
along with "maximizing rationality" (Scheffler 1982, 143) lead naturally to
consequentialism. Consequentialism without global consistency, however,
shares this irrationality, since it would allow for morally unobjectionable
actions that led to outcomes other than the best possible one, so long as
those actions were optimific given a certain limited frame of reference.5
With global consistency consequentialism is empty; lacking global consis
tency consequentialism loses its scant self-defense and becomes arbitrary.
Of course, the notion of action that I have been assuming, while not
very doctrinaire, is far from incontestable. Aside from abandoning global
consistency, then, there is another avenue for rescuing consequentialism.
One could argue that a different notion of action is in fact correct, and
that the context relevant to action so considered is different in a way that
renders it ultimately compatible with global consistency. A causal theory
of action is the most likely candidate to be featured in such a counter
argument. Not only does it have a broad base of support, it also seems to
render the context of action as something with the required form: as
divisible into discrete, instantaneous units.
I believe that causal theories of action are implausible, for a familiar
reason: they place the distinguishing mark of an action prior to, rather
than integral to, that action (cf. Frankfurt 1978, 157^62). Aside from
encouraging the construction of "wayward causal chain" counterexam
ples, it implies that no feature of any action distinguishes it as such. For
the sake of argument, however, I pass over this misgiving and assume that
a causal theory of some kind is correct: what distinguishes an action as
such is the character of its causal origination. Of course, in order to help
us here, it must be a particular kind of causal origination that counts. A
theory in which intentions are the causes, for example, but in which
intentions do not occur at a particular moment in time, would not help to
bring consequentialism into conformity with global consistency. It is,
loosely speaking, a billiard-ball sort of causality that could come to the
rescue here. It requires the absorption of the notion of action into the
5 Scheffler's own theory of course tolerates this irrationality, since it allows for "agent
centered prerogatives"; cf. Scheffler 1982. Scheffler's favored "hybrid" theory, characterized
in terms of permitted departures from a consequentialist baseline, thus enjoys the worst of
both worlds: it is both empty and globally inconsistent.
356 ROBERT GUAY
features of a mathematized nature. At the least, it would requir

to be explicable in terms of instantaneous moments of originat
A strong case can certainly be made for considering action in th
But action so considered cannot play a role in consequentialist
theory. In order to have a theory of action that would be helpful h
require not only a theory of causal antecedents but also a causal th
consequences. And this we cannot have. The problem with inv
naturalistic notion of causality to play a role in moral theory
anything is causally connected to everything else. Causal chain
break at convenient loci of moral significance, so even if they cou
to individuate actions, they would only obscure what is relevant he
path to what lies outside the action proper, specifically, to th
quence. Actions and their outcomes are of course causally conne
causal networks lead an individuated action not to one morally
outcome but to all that succeeds it. In taking up a causal theo
abandons the resources needed to sort everything out. All that one
with which to sort out what outcome is produced by what ac
temporal location—and only a point of origination, at that. C
tialism requires fixed points: this is the consequence of that. Bu
theory creates an unlimited horizon of effect: this action, al
everything cotemporal, sets in motion an infinite chain of events.
The determination of causal regularities between actions an
quences might seem to help. A counterfactual theory, in which par
actions were connected nomically to particular consequences, w
to distinguish what is an action's effect from what is merely after
Such a theory would disentangle, that is, all the concomitants from
action, showing how the action itself is causally productive, ind
of the circumstances that did in fact occur. Then one would pr
have available a notion of consequence that could do work in
theory. The burdens of such a theory would be great. At least
consequence versions of consequentialism, it would have to be in pr
possible to generate such theories about particular actions, at le
extent that it were actually the case that each action has an ef
could be isolated from the influence of other causes. Even for
consequence versions there would have to be causal regularitie
action types at some level of specification and outcome. Needle
the evidence problems for a useful counterfactual theory would be
The deeper problem with such a theory for present purposes, ho
is that it would be either confused or arbitrary. The most th
6 The closest thing to such a theory that I am aware of is in Jonathan Benne

Lectures, based on bodily movements and possible worlds; cf. Bennett 1981; cf.
1995. But Bennett's method does not address my complaint: the very project of
moral issue through conceptual analysis presumes, against global consistency, so
relevant consideration other than the best possible outcome.
theory could hope to establish is that, concerning some particular action,

even if its surrounding circumstances had been otherwise, the outcome
would nevertheless have been the same (at least in those respects that are
morally relevant). But ex hypothesi the circumstances were not otherwise,
and causal chains do not form so many parallel lines. The point of a
counterfactual theory would be to provide an account of the conse
quences of action within a causal picture of agency that made room for
global consistency. But such a counterfactual theory would have to stand
opposed to the causal framework that it is supposed to be coming to the
rescue of. If we were to understand a potentially useful counterfactual
theory realistically, we would have to interpret it as claiming that
causality, at least as it concerns actions and their consequences, operates
not as an interconnected system but as innumberable autonomous cause
effect pairings. Regardless of whether this is true, it conflicts with the
causal account that would explain how consequentialism could adhere to
global consistency: rather than providing for a single, consistent chain of
discrete contexts, it would create infinitely many irreconcilable causal
frameworks—one for each possible choice situation. Even if a causal
theory could individuate actions and their consequences, it would do so at
the cost of losing a globally consistent causal picture.
If we were to take a potentially useful counterfactual theory as merely
explanatory or instrumental, however, then it is arbitrary, at least without
the sorts of restrictions on the right or practical reason that it was
consequentialism's mission to deliver us from. It would be introducing
moral standards of action in the guise of theoretical fact, without any
reason to take them as morally significant. On the one hand, if a claim of
truth cannot even be made for the attribution of consequences, then it is
not clear on what basis they should be accorded significance. On the other
hand, it seems to rely on a commonsense attribution of consequences that
is moral in character. Even very complex attributions of consequences to
particular actions, involving fractional responsibility for a certain out
come or causally remote outcomes, are mundane. But such attributions
depend on placing restrictions on the scope of what counts as conse
quence, and these restrictions can only be defended through the involve
ment of normative notions of accountability or responsibility, at the least.
Not all causally connected outcomes count as the result of an action;
excluding some of these from a causal account would depend on
importing moral notions. The hypothetical counterfactual theory, in
short, would be an attempt to have one's cake and eat it, too: it invokes
a norm-governed account of actions and their consequences, while
pretending to do so within a naturalistic framework. But it makes the
former look ridiculous while departing from the latter.
Obviously, there is nothing inherently problematic about the theoret
ical use of cause and effect. But its role in moral theory differs from its
more typical role in science in two main respects. One of course is its use
358 ROBERT GUAY
concerning action and good; since they are obviously meaning

pendent of any particular theory, it is doubtful that they functio
theoretical terms. The other main difference between scientific and moral
theory, which renders the use of causality problematic in the latter but not
the former, is that science is local, while morality is not. It is not pertinent
to ask a theory concerning billiard balls about what happens off the table.
Scientific explanation concerns itself with accounting for what transpires
within a limited system; part of its power stems from ignoring the
extraneous. Morality, by contrast, is in principle limitless both in its scope
of inquiry and in its ability for self-doubt; restrictions in either are
themselves morally charged, and thus demand some sort of justification.
This is why the global consistency requirement arises; nothing lies cate
gorically outside the scope of moral consideration. The causal theory fails
to help consequentialism in part because moral theory asks too much of it.
The awkward fit of a causal theory of action in consequentialism is
only one example of a more general difficulty. The more basic problem is
that consequentialism, at least in familiar forms, consists of elements that
make sense individually but, though not in direct conflict, cannot be
combined systematically. Agency and a notion of the good compatible
with aggregation and maximization have different temporal horizons,
and thus, while they can be combined in individual cases given certain
stipulations, in general and independent of contextual limitations they
produce no content together. Whereas an action persists over an
indeterminate but limited duration, a maximizable good is precise and
infinitely divisible—indeed, if the good is measured in terms of states of
affairs, then it is infinitesimally short. Without infinite divisibility, there
would be times at which it would be unanswerable as to what outcome is
optimal. So there are two impossible burdens for a consequentialist
assessment of actions: correlating an infinitely divisible best possible
outcome with indeterminately long actions while maintaining global
consistency, and finding the outcome of some limited bit of activity
against an indefinite horizon of effect. This makes nonsense of any
standard that relies on a one-to-one correspondence between actions
and their consequences that does not already represent a moral judgment.
Action and the good cannot be reconciled systematically, and this
severely limits the form of any meaningful consequentialism.
The attractiveness of consequentialism was arguably that it permitted
the elimination of messy sui generis notions like reasons and meanings
from ethical theory. The inscrutability of ethical truth could be reduced to
a naturalistic account of the good and, at most, a seemingly weak bridge
notion like "maximizing rationality."7 But when all the messy sui generis
notions have been brushed away from your naturalistic picture, then
7 Cf. Scheffler 1982, 143. I call it a bridge notion because it serves to span the gap
between the good and the assessment of actions.
action, too, has departed. There is no way to offer a wholly naturalistic

consequentialism: you already have normative, nonteleological consid
erations in place when you assess actions in terms of their consequences.
Both notions imply particular temporal horizons, and both notions
incorporate more or less demanding standards. Identifying an action
places it under a description that locates it within an agent's ongoing self
direction. In spite of grammatical form, spilling coffee on oneself is
usually not an action: one does not do it, it happens to one.8 This is so not
because it is not preceded by sufficient deliberation, which is true of
almost all our actions, but because there is no way to fit such a happening
in any reasonable purposiveness. Identifying the consequences of that
action is to make a judgment about what within its circle of effects merits
attention for the purpose of assessment. Against this normative back
ground, consequentialist assessments are straightforward and mundane.
But consequentialism cannot supplant this background; eliminating the
normative constraints eliminates the means to reconcile the two sides.
Consequentialist judgments only make sense with elaborate assessments,
of action and the world, already in place. So if you want to argue that
welfare or happiness or preference satisfaction is all that really matters,
then by all means do so—but leave action out of it.
Of course, many forms of consequentialism remain untouched. Global
consistency becomes no trouble at all in either eschatological time or with
a particularly contrived notion of the good. If all that really matters is the
final judgment or, say, the experience of this sunset, then there is not
much that would need to be reconciled. But then what you have is only
incidentally consequentialism, and more directly a moral theory of
another kind. And with a more Aristotelian, less aggregative notion of
the good, consequentialism escapes from the whole problematic that I
have presented. But such a consequentialism would attend a sort of
naturalism different from and older than that it usually accompanies: the
notion of consequence, in particular, would be replaced by the notions of
ends and goals. What can remain of consequentialism, in general, lacks
the systematic character and presumptive authority that came from its
claims to represent a certain picture of "how things are." It offers a
particular sort of reason for particular sorts of actions, but that is all.
In any case, consequentialism's troubles should come as little surprise.
Consequentialism, famously, brooks no morally significant distinctions
among carrying something out, engendering it, and merely letting it
happen. It matters not one whit whether you did the deed yourself,
created a situation in which it was likely to transpire, or simply failed to
prevent it. No theory in which this is the case—in which it makes no
difference whether you did something or not—has much business
8 Of course spilling coffee on oneself can be an action, but then it is almost certainly
either histrionic or pathetic, or both.
360 ROBERT GUAY
offering a theory of right (or other kind of) action. The the
commitments of consequentialism are such that they leave little r
any normative theory of action at all. The category of action
restrictive: insofar as a distinction between someone doing someth
something happening to someone is to be maintained, there
some price to pay in terms of exclusivity. The exclusivity of agen
the form of meeting standards of self-governance, however
flexible they may be. But if states of affairs are the only things
relevance, there is no room for these standards, and thus no
agency in moral theory. And this is why no one has ever ma
articulate what it is that consequentialism demands. What one i
to do, rather than what is supposed to happen, is an incompre
question within the confines of consequentialism.
Many points of awkwardness for consequentialism, both m
extreme, have been recognized: its apparent inability to serve
morality, the limitlessness of responsibility, the difficulty of
present good against future good, its questionable role withi
tion, that someone can create an obligation for you by wanting th
causing trouble, that the aggregate of goods is not even as c
structured as an individual's good, and so on. The most famous
complaint against consequentialism, however, is perhaps what has come
to be known as the "integrity" argument (cf. Williams 1973). As usually
understood (Pettit 1997, esp. 97ff., and Scheffler 1982, 22), the argument
is that consequentialism requires persons to reflect and act in ways that
undermine their integrity, and thus promotes an unappealing and
unethical depersonalization of the moral agent. Properly understood,
however, the argument is that although consequentialism is nominally
neutral as to the good,9 the demand to maximize actually favors certain
goods over others in a way that makes consequentialism fall into
senselessness.
Williams at first seems to allow that it would still be possible for
utilitarianism to be correct, even if it could not recognize integrity. But
then he insists that it could not be correct, "since the reason why
utilitarianism cannot understand integrity is that it cannot coherently
describe the relation between a man's projects and his actions" (1973,
100). It is not merely some disvalue that is at stake in the failure to
recognize integrity, it is the coherence of an account that relates agents to
their actions. Systematic adherence to a maximization principle collapses
into senselessness because in seeking to maximize the aggregate good, the
moral agent would naturally promote whatever goods are most efficiently
promoted. In this way, more general goods would be favored over deeply
9 Of course, this only applies to what might be called "subjectivist" forms of con
sequentialism, in which the good is relativized to the preferences or desires of individuals.
personal attachments.10 There is no limit to this, however; what is called

for is the continuous sacrifice of the more personal for the sake of the less,
until there is nothing left. If there is a subjective basis to what counts as
good, and the principle of right favors some sorts of goods over others,
then without fixed reference points the very basis for action is hopelessly
unstable. A thoroughgoing consequentialism would collapse under its
own weight, continuously undermining its own locus of value. The
integrity argument is not that particular sorts of deeply personal values
are inevitably excluded from consequentialist calculations but that in
antagonizing personal integrity consequentialist calculations become
regressive and, ultimately, meaningless.
I call attention to the integrity argument here because it and many of
consequentialism's other troubles all share one common form. They arise
from the combination of diachronic and synchronic elements. This origin
explains why these troubles are not always apparent. The examples of our
literary tradition usually present us with a fixed and narrowly circum
scribed choice situation: one gives someone something or not, with some
benefit to her or not, and some loss to him or not. With all the relevant
considerations fixed in place, assessment is at least possible. But in the
case of the integrity argument, what constitutes the good comes to be
affected by the principle of right. When what one should do is settled by
what matters, and what matters is conditioned by what one should do,
then both agency and the good are undermined. Faced with a decisive
moment, and a future good to look to, someone could be expected to
make the right choice, or at least be held to the right standard. But a
moral life, one hopes, is an ongoing enterprise. Demands on agency,
accordingly, require the standing possibility of making sense of one's
life—something that consequentialism makes impossible. In this article I
have tried to make that case in its most general form, that of conflicting
temporal horizons. A long life doubtless remains for consequentialist
assessment; indeed, sometimes it does represent a demand of rationality,
and sometimes this is the decisive consideration. But consequentialism as
a comprehensive moral doctrine should be put to rest."
713 Anderson Hall

Temple University
Philadelphia, PA 19122
USA
r_guay@hotmail.com
10 This is perhaps an empirical matter, and one could argue that the reverse is true. But
this makes no difference, except to the name of the argument. Obviously it is only a matter of
"(personal) integrity" if general goods are most efficiently promoted.
11 I wish to thank Anna Gebbie, Emily Nakamura, Thomas Pogge, and especially Scott
Anderson for their help in writing this article; the comments of anonymous referees were
helpful in revising it. They are, of course, not responsible for my mistakes.
362 ROBERT GUAY
References
Bennett, Jonathan. 1981. "Morality and Consequences." In The Tanner

Lectures on Human Values, edited by S. McMurrin, 47-116. Salt Lake
City: University of Utah Press.
. 1995. The Act Itself. New York: Oxford University Press.
Frankfurt, Harry. 1978. "The Problem of Action." American Philosophi
cal Quarterly 35:157-62.
Lyons, David. 1965. The Forms and Limits of Utilitarianism. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Pettit, Philip. 1997. "The Consequentialist Perspective." In Three Meth
ods of Ethics, edited by M. Baron, P. Pettit, and M. Slote, 92-174.
Oxford: Blackwell.
Railton, Peter. 1984. "Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of
Morality." Philosophy and Public Affairs 13:134-71.
Scheffler, Samuel. 1982. The Rejection of Consequentialism. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Sen, Amartya. 1979. "Utilitarianism and Welfare." Journal of Philosophy
76:463-89.
Williams, Bernard. 1973. "A Critique of Utilitarianism." In Utilitarian
ism: For and Against, edited by J. J. C. Smart and B. Williams, 75-150.
New York: Cambridge University Press.

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A REFUTATION OF CONSEQUENTIALISM

Author(s): ROBERT GUAY

Abstract: This article argues that consequentialism does not work as

Keywords: consequentialism, utilitarianism, integrity, ethics.

"You want things to happen without being involved in them."

The thesis of this article is that consequentialism does not work as a

© Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

ism. I have nothing to say about nonmaximizing forms of consequenti

Consequentialism demands optimization. It is not enough to make

© Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

subject to what might be called a global consistency requirement: that

© Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

© Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

experiments and into actual assessment, then there are epistem

© Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

© Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

This formulation of the tensions internal to consequentialism might seem

© Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

context compatible with global consistency, then there is no consistent

© Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

features of a mathematized nature. At the least, it would requir

6 The closest thing to such a theory that I am aware of is in Jonathan Benne

© Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

theory could hope to establish is that, concerning some particular action,

© Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

concerning action and good; since they are obviously meaning

© Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

action, too, has departed. There is no way to offer a wholly naturalistic

© Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

© Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

personal attachments.10 There is no limit to this, however; what is called

713 Anderson Hall

© Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

Bennett, Jonathan. 1981. "Morality and Consequences." In The Tanner

© Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005

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