Saturday, January 31, 2015

Consequentialism vs. Non-Consequentialism vs. Moral Particularism

Update 2015-10-15: This was written prior to my discovery of Dual Consequentialism which is something of a game changer. Current view: Panoramic attentiveness to outcomes don't necessarily faze out particularistic evaluations of aggregation. A principled devotion to aggregation entails a one-size-fits-all aggregative calculus, which I find morally monstrous. Despite this, there is no immutable antagonism between particularism and consequentialism when one's particularism is sensibly forward-looking. I suppose backward-looking particularism is a possibility, but I am yet to see a deontologist, for instance, shun Principlism in its favor. It's not hard to see why. To ground 'shouldness' in deontic ways entails a deference to principles, which runs contrary to particularism simpliciter. Thus the spat between the consequentialist and the particularist isn't an unfailing one. The forward-looking particularist and the [dual] consequentialist may perceive each other as moral chums, when all is said and done. Still yet, most applications of consequentialism do not encourage dual-ranking verdicts, at least not in the way I construe dual-ranking verdicts, which may well be idiosyncratic. Nor are most consequentialists quick to side with multi-dimensional aggregative schemes over unidimensional ones. In light of this, the below points remain worthy of consideration.