---
title: Consequentialism
sort: 110
section-id: ethics
description: Utilitarian and consequentialist ethics from Bentham and Mill to Peter Singer and contemporary debates about act versus rule consequentialism.
language: en
---

# Consequentialism

Consequentialism is the family of ethical theories holding that the moral quality of an action is entirely determined by its consequences. The right action is whichever action produces the best outcome. This apparently simple thesis generates a remarkably rich — and contested — philosophical programme.

## Bentham's Utilitarianism

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) founded classical utilitarianism on the *principle of utility*: actions are right insofar as they promote happiness, and wrong insofar as they promote unhappiness. By "happiness," Bentham meant pleasure and the absence of pain.^[Bentham, J. (1789). *Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation*. Payne.]

Bentham proposed the *felicific calculus* — a method for quantifying pleasure and pain along seven dimensions: intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, fecundity, purity, and extent. The theory is rigorously impartialist: "each to count for one and none for more than one." The pleasure of a street cleaner counts exactly as much as that of an aristocrat.

## Mill's Refinements

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) accepted the utilitarian framework but argued that pleasures differ not only in quantity but in quality. *Higher pleasures* — intellectual enjoyment, moral sentiment, aesthetic experience — are intrinsically more valuable than lower, merely sensory pleasures.^[Mill, J.S. (1863). *Utilitarianism*. Parker, Son, and Bourn.] "It is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied."

Mill also attempted a consequentialist defence of rights and justice: rights protect interests so important that no ordinary gain in welfare could justify violating them. Whether this defence succeeds — whether rights can be grounded in utility without collapsing into mere policy instruments — remains debated.

## Act and Rule Consequentialism

**Act consequentialism** holds that each individual action should be evaluated by its consequences. The right act is the one that, among all available alternatives, produces the greatest aggregate welfare.

**Rule consequentialism** holds that we should follow rules whose general adoption would produce the best consequences. We do not evaluate each act individually but ask: "What rule, if generally followed, would produce the best outcomes?" Rule consequentialism preserves more intuitive commitments about promise-keeping and justice: keeping a promise may not maximise utility on a particular occasion, but a rule requiring promise-keeping generally does.

The objection to act consequentialism is that it seems to justify intuitively monstrous acts whenever the mathematics works out. If torturing an innocent person would prevent a slightly larger number of harms, act consequentialism apparently demands it. The *separateness of persons* objection (Rawls) argues that consequentialism fails to respect the distinction between persons, treating them merely as vessels for welfare rather than as individuals with their own claims.

## Peter Singer and Preference Utilitarianism

Peter Singer (b. 1946) defends a preference utilitarianism that extends moral consideration to all sentient beings capable of having preferences.^[Singer, P. (1979). *Practical Ethics*. Cambridge University Press.] The boundary of the moral community is not species membership but sentience. Singer's argument for animal liberation, global poverty obligations, and euthanasia all follow from applying the impartial preference calculus rigorously.

Singer's *drowning child* argument: if you could save a drowning child at trivial cost to yourself, you are morally required to do so. But the same logic applies to distant strangers dying of preventable diseases. If distance does not diminish moral obligation, affluent people in wealthy nations are obligated to give dramatically more than they typically do.^[Singer, P. (1972). "Famine, Affluence, and Morality." *Philosophy & Public Affairs*, 1(3).]

## Objections

### The Demandingness Objection
Impartial consequentialism seems to demand that we sacrifice almost all personal projects, relationships, and pleasures to maximise aggregate welfare. Bernard Williams argued that this alienates us from our own "ground projects" — the commitments that give our lives meaning.^[Williams, B. (1973). "A Critique of Utilitarianism." In Smart & Williams, *Utilitarianism: For and Against*.]

### The Integrity Objection
Williams' related argument: if consequences are all that matter, then I should be willing to perform any act — including acts I find deeply repugnant — if doing so maximises welfare. This seems to demand that agents violate their own integrity in ways that undermine the coherence of a moral life.

### The Measurement Problem
How do we compare welfare across persons? Cardinal welfare comparisons are notoriously difficult. Preference satisfaction is a proxy, but preferences can be adaptive (the oppressed learn to desire less), malformed, or satisfied in ways that harm the agent.

### Rights Violations
Robert Nozick's side-constraints view: there are moral side-constraints on action — rights — that cannot be overridden even by sufficiently large welfare gains. Using a person merely as a means to aggregate welfare violates their dignity as an end in themselves.^[Nozick, R. (1974). *Anarchy, State, and Utopia*. Basic Books.]

## Sophisticated Consequentialism

Many contemporary consequentialists have developed more sophisticated positions that accommodate common moral intuitions:

- **Indirect consequentialism**: evaluate character traits and dispositions by their consequences, not individual acts
- **Two-level utilitarianism** (Hare): intuitive level rules for everyday decision-making, critical level for theoretical reflection
- **Satisficing consequentialism**: require producing good-enough outcomes rather than maximising

These refinements preserve the spirit of consequentialism while avoiding the most counterintuitive implications.

## Further Reading

- Parfit, D. (1984). *Reasons and Persons*. Oxford University Press.
- Crisp, R. (1997). *Mill on Utilitarianism*. Routledge.
- Kagan, S. (1989). *The Limits of Morality*. Oxford University Press.
