The Unreliability of Foreseeable Consequences: A Return to the Epistemic Objection
Consequentialists maintain that an act is morally right just in case it produces the best consequences of any available alternative. Because agents are ignorant about some of their acts consequences, they cannot be certain about which alternative is best. Kagan (1998) contends that it is reasonable...
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| Tipo de documento: | Electrónico Artículo |
| Lenguaje: | Inglés |
| Verificar disponibilidad: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Gargar...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Publicado: |
Springer Science + Business Media B. V
[2015]
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| En: |
Ethical theory and moral practice
Año: 2015, Volumen: 18, Número: 4, Páginas: 759-766 |
| Clasificaciones IxTheo: | NCA Ética VA Filosofía |
| Otras palabras clave: | B
Epistemic objection
B Statistics B Consequentialism |
| Acceso en línea: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Sumario: | Consequentialists maintain that an act is morally right just in case it produces the best consequences of any available alternative. Because agents are ignorant about some of their acts consequences, they cannot be certain about which alternative is best. Kagan (1998) contends that it is reasonable to assume that unforeseen good and bad consequences roughly balance out and can be largely disregarded. A statistical argument demonstrates that Kagans assumption is almost always false. An acts foreseeable consequences are an extremely poor indicator of the goodness of its overall consequences. Acting based on foreseeable consequences is barely more reliably good than acting completely at random. |
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| ISSN: | 1572-8447 |
| Obras secundarias: | Enthalten in: Ethical theory and moral practice
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1007/s10677-015-9602-8 |