Consequences

“The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.”
B. F. Skinner

Today, as I was sipping some menthe tea, I started thinking about consequences. What we do, why we do it and how it shapes us.

If all of our actions are done to obtain something, and that something is ultimately what we care about, then it makes sense to judge actions, to determine the moral status of actions, based on that end. This view is known as consequentialism: That the consequences of an action are all that matter in a moral assessment. Or is it?

Think about something you recently did. Chances are, you did what you did because you wanted to make something happen or to accomplish some goal, however big or small it might be. Reflecting back, it seem as though everything we do is in order to achieve something. And everything we do ends up with a certain consequence, better or worse depending on the action we chose to take. We and our actions change our lives and the world around us accordingly, in a smaller or a larger way. I would like the world to be in a certain way, but it’s not currently in that state, thus I will do this certain thing to help making it more in the image I have on it.

We often do things to bring about certain consequences, even if we don’t really do it consciously. Think about it, why would you do anything if you didn’t think it was going to have some sort of a result?

Sometimes it turns out consequences seem to dominate our moral thinking. It can actually be somewhat difficult to think of an immoral action that has no bad consequences. For example, what is wrong with violence? The answer is pretty obvious to this question. But what would be the answer to “why shouldn’t you lie”? For starters, it might cause others to not trust you anymore. But what about the harmless little lies? Are they wrong if there is no obvious consequence afterwards? This type of ethics produces this important conclusion: basically no type of act is inherently wrong — not even murder. It depends on the result of the act. Suppose that by killing an entirely innocent person, we can save the lives of 10 other innocent people. Will that have good or bad consequences?

Simple forms of consequentialism say that the best action is the one that produces the largest sum of happiness. This seems to ignore how that happiness is shared out. And so would seem to approve of acts that make most people happy, and a few people very unhappy, or that make a few people ecstatically happy and leave the majority at best neutral.

While consequentialism might sound somewhat appealing, it could lead to some rather troubling implications. Let’s say that you could do something really wrong or vile, but no one ever would find out and there would not be any damages, is it still wrong to do it? These actions will have bad consequences anyway, even if you’re certain that they wont or no one will find out. You might be good at keeping secrets, but this will affect you in way you don’t even consider before making those actions. But if nothing bad comes after your action or if no one will discover what we did, why not do it after all? And what if all you care about are indeed the consequences, but you realize that you could obtain good consequences by breaking the rules, why would you continue to abide by those rules?

Since my behaviour is based on my assessment of the consequences, should the rightness or wrongness of an act be assessed on what I thought was going to happen or what actually happened? Is an act with good results done by someone who intended harm as good as if it was done by someone who intended to do good?

And what exactly should be assessed in calculating good consequences? Moreover, the ethical choices people make are likely to be different according to which group they use for their moral calculations.

While consequentialism could seem an instinctual moral theory, it can produce rather strange moral results. This might show that it is false, or that consequences aren’t all that matter in such an assessment. Or maybe it is true, and true morality doesn’t always interfere with our everyday impressions.

So, what makes us good after all?

“Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end. Every rational action must set before itself not only a principle, but also an end.”
Immanuel Kant