Consequentialism

Abstract This chapter addresses two key questions: (1) What is core to consequentialism? and (2) How might consequentialism best be expanded beyond its core commitments? A dizzying variety of consequentialist theories have been proposed in recent years—maximizing, satisficing, or scalar; restrictive, sophisticated, or subjective; global or local; agent-neutral or agent-relative; welfarist, recursive, or violation-minimizing. Through critically exploring these various options, this chapter disputes two dogmas of contemporary consequentialism: that there is nothing more to blameworthiness than the question whether it would promote value to express blame, and that the only normative question that arises regarding one’s character (or motive or decision procedure) is whether it promotes value. One may be a consequentialist—a utilitarian, even—about action, while taking other normative resources to be essential for explaining moral lives more broadly. The chapter thus argues for a new expanded view, fitting consequentialism, that is richer than the extant views on offer.