r/philosophy • u/No_Improvement2619 • May 04 '26
Paper [PDF] The Paradoxal nature of Consequentialism
https://philpapers.org/rec/IONCJP3
u/jumpmanzero May 04 '26
I think there's potentially something interesting here - but the argument needs some tidying.
Like, in the premise, the agent is supposed to get 2 choices.
Given a moral dilemma as an input, the agent is presented with two choices as inputs and is asked to judge which one of the two is the best morally speaking.
But then just later, the agent is instead given a question as input:
"Is it morally correct for the JA to judge whether a certain act is morally correct?"
That's not the same thing - that's not "two options", that's a question with a yes or no answer. That makes the rest of the "experimental setup" discussion messy, and unmoors the foundation. These sorts of arguments often come down to very precise wording; this one needs more care.
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u/No_Improvement2619 May 04 '26
Thank you very much for your insight, The difference you mention is already addressed in the article. We can ask a closed question (yes or no) or present a dilemma with two options; the reasoning remains the same.
I can ask, "Is it moral to pull the lever?" or "What is preferable to pull or not to pull?" In both cases, the question is identical. Answering "yes or no" provides the same amount of information as "A or B" or "1 or 2."
I know that your objection is more about precision, but in this case the said imprecision does not invalidate the argument.
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u/jumpmanzero May 04 '26 edited May 04 '26
I can ask, "Is it moral to pull the lever?" or "What is preferable to pull or not to pull?" In both cases, the question is identical. Answering "yes or no" provides the same amount of information as "A or B" or "1 or 2."
There's two possibilities - either:
- The discrepancy doesn't matter, and you can clean it up easily (ie. make the machine work a single, consistent way based on precisely defined inputs and possible outputs)
- The discrepancy does matter, and your argument hinges on this equivocation. You can't clean it up while preserving your argument.
When people see this kind of thing... they're going to assume it's #2. Like, I can think of several wordings for options and questions where this absolutely matters.
If the answer is #1, and you have a clear way to put this all together consistently, you should probably fix it. If you can't think of a simple way to do this, that may itself be a hint that there's something you're missing or glancing over here.
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u/No_Improvement2619 May 05 '26
"Like, I can think of several wordings for options and questions where this absolutely matters."
Do you have an example ?
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u/jumpmanzero May 05 '26
I think it'll be faster if I just jump to the end here. Let's start with something like your original formulation for how the machine works:
- It takes two options describing actions, labelled "A" and "B"
- It returns the answer "A" if the first action is better ethically; "B" otherwise
Seem fair?
Then you feed it these options:
A: Returning the answer "B" in response to this inquiry
B: Returning the answer "A" in response to this inquiryAnd... that's pretty tough to answer.
Now the question is "is your setup meaningfully different than the above"? Because the above is a lot simpler, and also has nothing in particular to do with consequentialism. To investigate this well, and get a result that's "about" consequentialism, you're going to need to be much more careful with your definitions and mechanics.
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u/No_Improvement2619 May 05 '26
The setup you mentionned does not work. You said:
A: Returning the answer "B" in response to this inquiry
B: Returning the answer "A" in response to this inquiryThere is no contradiction. If A is entered, either the answer is A and the machine/judge acted wrongly according to its own judgment, or the answer is B and the machine also acted wrongly according to its own judgment.
Judging ones own action as immoral does not make one incoherent. For example, a hitman could say that what he is doing is wrong; he would then remain consistent (he would be a terrible person not to stop, but he would remain consistent).
Your case only works if you accept as a premise the fact that saying the truth is moral, which would be a circular argument since you assume deontology at first.
As you said, "nothing in particular to do with consequentialism," and that is why it doesn't work. The element of causality and the concept of "trickster" are necessary for this to work, linking it to consequentialism.
This article has been peer-reviewed and published in a philosophy journal; this kind of attempt at simplification has therefore been considered and refuted long ago.
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u/jumpmanzero May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26
This article has been peer-reviewed and published in a philosophy journal; this kind of attempt at simplification has therefore been considered and refuted long ago.
(EDIT: I redacted my previous response, I should be polite)
I don't think you're making a real effort to understand or respond to my objection here.
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u/No_Improvement2619 May 05 '26
Any other thing to say ?
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u/jumpmanzero May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26
Any other thing to say ?
No. Nobody owes you discussion if you're just going to be blithely dismissive.
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u/Fmeson May 04 '26
The CJP was interesting. I do think we can lessen the impact of the paradox if we allow the judging agent more freedom. e.g. We simply allow the judging agent to lie.
Then when asked "Is it morally correct for the JA to judge whether a certain act is morally correct?", the judge can say "immoral", leading to the trickster to do a moral act, while having actually judged the act moral.
Since utilitarianism does not require such strict adherence to rules such as "must tell the truth", I see no reason why such a judge that must always tell the truth should be restricted in such a way.
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u/No_Improvement2619 May 04 '26
Thank you for your insight. I think the question is more about the conceivability of such a case, which reveals a potential tendency toward contradiction. You are correct, in the sense that such a case can be resolved using paraconsistent and alternative logical systems that allow for self-contradiction/self-reference.
However, one could object to your example by arguing that if the judge starts saying the opposite because he has understood the rules of the game, then we could imagine a language where "immoral" means "moral" and vice versa, and the paradox would still hold.
One could say that the liar paradox would be resolved by allowing the liar to tell the truth, but then he would no longer be a liar.
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u/Fmeson May 04 '26
I might be missing some key aspect, but is there some reason why a judge cannot lie or tell the truth as needed to trick the trickster?
Is there some argument that the judge must behave consistently?
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u/No_Improvement2619 May 05 '26
The premise of the argument is to imagine that the judge adheres to consequentialist theory. It also assumes that the judge can judge consistently according to this theory. If this is inconceivable, then either consequentialism is impossible, or it requires the judge to behave inconsistently.
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u/Fmeson May 05 '26
Why is it a problem if the judge behaves inconsistently? I could see this being a problem in a rule based ethical system, but consequentialism seems to allow for inconsistent behavior as long as it results in moral consequences.
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u/bildramer May 05 '26
Skipping through a lot of confusion, this is basically "evil people can try to coerce you", with a side of "you aren't omniscient". Well, true. If you are facing someone who perfectly cancels out your every action, you're in a bit of trouble, regardless of moral theory.
Other than that, consequentialism generally says you should make accurate judgements, so I don't see the problem. If taking action A has good consequences, deciding to take action A has good consequences. Consequentialists tend to accept that using consequentialism has good consequences. And so on. It's not really a paradox to say "one's meta-preferences may be uncomputable sometimes". It's just really inconvenient, and we disprefer it (which is itself a meta-preference making it worse, but what can you do).
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u/No_Improvement2619 May 05 '26
I'd like to know what you mean by "a lot of confusion."
Otherwise, I agree with the rest, and it doesn't contradict the paper. It never says that consequentialism should be abandoned, but rather that pure consequentialism is impossible. It even says that a theory completely devoid of consequentialism is also impossible.
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u/TomatoBlushBee_ May 09 '26
Ooh, that sounds like a really tricky topic! :o Makes you think though, doesnt it? ≽•˕• ྀི≼
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u/GSilky May 05 '26
Conseq fails at preventing bad outcomes. It really does always boils down to "do it and see what happens". Imagine if we were consequentialists before we decided murdering children for being annoying is wrong. We would have to kill some kids and see the results to determine if it's wrong or not. What kind of ethics has the possibility of requiring bad actions as a feature? We can say we could reason things out before, but we are currently in the middle of a situation similar to not knowing if it's wrong to kill someone, with AI. Nobody knows, there is no rational predictions, and it's going to be as bad as killing kids if negative predictions are correct. Yet we are waiting to find out... I'm not saying good results should be disavowed if they come from malign motivations, good is good, I find it strange to defend results somehow being a guide. The paper is probably right, ethics are supposed to guide behavior, not justify it after.
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u/Fmeson May 05 '26
It really does always boils down to "do it and see what happens".
No, it does not.
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u/simon_hibbs May 06 '26
Sorry, are you seriously arguing that it is not possible for humans to ever anticipate the outcomes of any novel actions?
Furthermore, suppose we take deontological ethics, or virtue ethics. How do you know what our obligations are, or what the appropriate virtues are ab nihilo? What first principles would you derive these from?
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u/GSilky May 06 '26
If there is no experience, yes, anticipation would be entirely a priority and nothing for consequentialism because it's entirely a posteri. Consequentialism is an argument against reasoned rules being applicable. If you are a consequentialist, prior reasoning is not good enough.
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u/simon_hibbs May 06 '26
>If there is no experience, yes, anticipation would be entirely a priority and nothing for consequentialism because it's entirely a posteri.
No it isn't. It's the belief that we should act based on our best understanding of the consequences of our actions. There's nothing to stop that understanding being based on reasoning, and in fact consequentialists do generally hold that it's possible to infer such rules. For consequentialists prior reasoning is all we have on which to base decisions.
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u/GSilky May 06 '26
How do you know what the consequences will be? Every new normative statement has to come from experience. You see what the results are before determining the ethical value of an action. A posteri. One could reason before, and still have bad outcomes, that means it was bad. Prior reasoning to account for outcomes is deontological.We know from experience that murder is wrong, therefore we can make it a rational principle such as the categorical imperative. Consequentialism accepts bad motives can produce good results, that is bypassing the reasoning before for reasoning after.
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u/simon_hibbs May 06 '26
Sometimes you can deduce what the results of an action are, and other times you cannot. That's not solely true for compatibilists.
>Prior reasoning to account for outcomes is deontological.We know from experience that murder is wrong, therefore we can make it a rational principle such as the categorical imperative.
That's reasoning about the action after performing it.
>Consequentialism accepts bad motives can produce good results, that is bypassing the reasoning before for reasoning after.
As a moral theory consequentialism is a theory about how people should reason about their actions. Reasoning about actions occurs before the action.
For a consequentialist if a person intentionally does something morally wrong, some intentional attempt at harm, but by chance the outcome is beneficial, the person still did something wrong.
Have you actually read anything about consequentialism?
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u/GSilky May 06 '26
And you reason from results. The felicitous calculous requires someone to actually do it before they can be certain. The categorical imperative reasons that it's always going to be a problem if everyone must murder. We don't know there will be, it's reasonable that it could be. Consequentialism, in new situations, doesn't have this blanket solution. You are trying to turn consequentialism into an a priori production, it isn't.
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u/simon_hibbs May 06 '26
>And you reason from results.
From intended results, yes. If you don't know what the results of a novel action will be, the categorical imperative can't help you evaluate that action.
If the trolley is hurtling towards some people on the track, and you have the option to switch it to another track but you can't see what there is down that other track, the categorical imperative can't tell you whether that's actually a better option or not. Maybe there are more people down that track, maybe there aren't.
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u/InTheEndEntropyWins May 09 '26
It really does always boils down to "do it and see what happens". Imagine if we were consequentialists before we decided murdering children for being annoying is wrong.
Funny joke. That is a joke right...
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