Non-consequentialism and universalizability

Philosophical Quarterly

Volumn 50, Issue 199, 2000, Pages 175-190

  Pettit, Philip ^a  

^a AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

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EID: 21344432482     PISSN: 00318094     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1467-9213.00178     Document Type: Article

References (16)

1. The account given here of consequentialism and non-consequentialism - strictly, consequentialism and non-consequentialism about acts - draws on earlier work, most recently on my contribution to M. Baron, P. Pettit and M. Slote, Three Methods of Ethics: a Debate (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997).
2. See also P. Pettit and M. Smith, 'Global Consequentialism', in B. Hooker et al. (eds), Morality, Rules and Consequences: a Critical Reader (Edinburgh UP, 2000).
3. Three points: first, the representation I offer here is not the only one possible, but nothing in my argument is affected by that fact, for the alternative representations that I envisage are only notationally distinct: see my contribution to Three Methods of Ethics. Secondly, where I speak here of people's instantiating a pattern in their behaviour or relationships, I have spoken in earlier work of honouring the pattern: see my 'Consequentialism', in P. Singer (ed.), A Companion to Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), pp. 230-40. And thirdly, I consider here only the sort of non-consequentialism that requires an agent-over-time to instantiate certain patterns; a stricter version would require an agent-at-a-time always to instantiate them, even if that meant that the pattern was less well realized over the agent's life as a whole.
4. While I assume that all patterns of the kind that non-consequentialists think should be instantiated in an agent's life can be taken as neutral values to be promoted, I am not now inclined to think that all patterns of the kind that consequentialists think should be promoted can be taken as patterns to be instantiated in an agent's life. See D. McNaughton and P. Rawling, 'Honoring and Promoting Values', Ethics, 102 (1992), pp. 835-43, discussed below.
5. See P. Pettit and G. Brennan, 'Restrictive Consequentialism', Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 64 (1986), pp. 438-55;
6. P. Railton, 'Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality', Philosophy and Public Affairs, 13 (1984), pp. 134-71.
7. See W. Rabinowicz, Universalizability: a Study in Morals and Metaphysics (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1979).
8. The difference is one of scope. I need not say for every X, that X ought to do O in C-type circumstances. Rather, for every X, I say that X ought to do O in C-type circumstances. This helps to explain why Harean universalization is different from Kantian generalization: see R.M. Hare, Moral Thinking: its Levels, Method and Pant (Oxford UP, 1981). However, if C-circumstances are always guaranteed to be specified in a comprehensive way, as they rarely, in practice, will be specified, then both universal prescriptions can be maintained without the suggestion that a collective pattern is prescribed. We could happily defend the universalization that gives 'it is right' wide scope, for example, though ordinary usage might be strained in our doing so, if the specification stipulated not just that there is a child in trouble in the water, but that there is only one potential life-saver around. I am grateful for comments from Earl Conee on this point.
9. R. Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974), p. 28.
10. See J. Braithwaite and P. Pettit, Not Just Deserts: a Republican Theory of Criminal Justice (Oxford UP, 1990).
11. See James Dreier, 'Internalism and Speaker Relativism', Ethics, 101 (1990), pp. 6-26.
12. On the recourse to indexicalization, and other reasons for invoking it, see I.L. Humberstone, 'Two Kinds of Agent-Relativity', The Philosophical Quarterly, 41 (1991), pp. 144-66, esp. pp. 148-9, where Humberstone envisages a formulation of ethical egoism that parallels the formulation which I envisage here for non-consequentialism.
13. X' serves. Dreier, in 'Accepting Agent-Centered Norms: a Problem for Non-cognitivists and a Suggestion for Solving It', Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 74 (1996), pp. 409-21, offers the non-cognitivist a way out of this difficulty, using the approach I describe in the next section. I do not think much of that escape myself, but this is not the place to argue the point.
14. McNaughton and Rawling, 'Agent-Relativity and the Doing-Happening Distinction', Philosophical Studies, 63 (1991), pp. 167-85;
15. 'Honoring and Promoting Values', Ethics, 102 (1992), pp. 835-43;
16. 'Value and Agent-Relative Reasons', Utilitas, 7 (1995), pp. 31-47.