The ascendant moral theory among today’s general public is consequentialism, the theory that only consequences matter in normative evaluation. It is easy to understand consequentialism’s appeal: its framework of action based on efficient causation aligns with our widely accepted physicalist metaphysics, and its focus on outcomes mirrors the prevailing political-economic logic of capitalism. However, the joint dominance of these three doctrines—consequentialism, physicalism, and capitalism—makes it hard to imagine alternative worldviews (as the saying goes, “Fish don’t know they’re in water.”). While proponents of physicalism and capitalism assert themselves by claiming that alternatives are infeasible, it is not uncommon to see consequentialists resorting to reductivism to take down their enemies. In particular, they like to claim that all other moral theories are just consequentialism in disguise. Consider, for instance, the charge that deontology, the moral theory that emphasizes following rules, is just “rule consequentialism”, a form of consequentialism where actions are judged according to rules that are justified by their consequences. The reductivist argument is simple: most deontological theories assert a common good, such as rationality, that unifies the theory’s rules. The reductivist reinterprets this to mean that the deontological theory adopts a rule based on the consequence of providing the good, thus reducing the theory to rule consequentialism. Similar strategies can be deployed against the full range of non-consequentialist moral theories—strategies that must be refuted if we want those theories to survive.
On a broader scale, all moral theories start looking alike when you press them hard enough. Whether it is utilitarianism, deontology, divine command theory, or something else, these theories (at a sophisticated level) tend to converge on similar principles like “respect others” and “you are responsible for your actions”. If you go the other way and dive into the justifications for these theories, you will find some variant of “follow these principles because it would be best”. Of course, these similarities are superficial. The moral theories I listed differ on how they define “respect”, “others”, “your actions”, “best”, and so on.
A careful reader might notice that the structure of these similarities is the same no matter how the concepts are defined. The rule “respect others” always governs some relationship between a subject and a non-subject and the rule “you are responsible for your actions” always applies to agents. Reductivists gain a foothold here because in the case of justification, this sameness (i.e. that all theories posit one should follow x because it would be y) seems to have a name—consequentialism. The reductivist might say something like, “Despite its faults, there’s really no alternative to consequentialism. All moral theories are just variations on consequentialism because in the end, the reason to pursue the categorical imperative/virtue/the word of god is because it leads to rationality/eudaimonia/salvation.” These are the sort of arguments I will refute in this essay. I believe that this supposed structural sameness is just as illusory as the conceptual sameness we easily dismissed; but first, we will need a better grasp on consequentialism and the structure of the “it would be best” justification to fully recognize the error that reductivists are making.
To fully appreciate the threat of reductivism, I will begin by discussing a common anti-reductivist argument—one I’ve personally used in moral debates—that does not suffice: the argument that reducing all moral theories to consequentialism renders consequentialism itself meaningless, as it no longer distinguishes one theory from another. In other words, if all moral theories boil down to consequentialism, and thus implicitly accede to it, then we are only wasting time when we debate the merits of consequentialism and should instead focus on other features of these theories, such as their conceptions of values or goodness. After all, our disagreements over moral theories can only be settled by focusing on their differences, not their similarities. However, consequentialism is more than just a reason to prefer utilitarianism over its alternatives. It makes a specific claim about the kind of things that matter in morality; namely, that consequences matter, and intentions, devotion, and moral character don’t. It’s not enough to dismiss reductionism for making consequentialism too broad. If we want to claim that we should care about things besides consequences, then we will need to show that those other things cannot, in fact, be reduced to some kind of consequence.
But what makes an action’s outcome, a consequence? We might, for instance, say that an intention is a consequence of an action, since by performing the action, we turn a possible intention into an actual one. Or, we might say that faith is a consequence of action, since our faith is made real (in a contested sense) by our works. In the words of James the brother of Jesus, “Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. […] shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works” (James 2:17-18). But there is something strange about viewing these outcomes as consequences. It does not seem like an intention can possibly be a consequence of an action, since intentions are typically thought of as the causes of actions and thus always precede them. In the case of faith and good works, we do not think that good works produce faith or are a requirement of faith, but that they are a necessary consequence of faith and it is in this way that our works show our faith. What we need to keep in mind, then, is the distinction between actual consequences, like the actualization of an intention and the demonstration of faith, and things those consequences merely refer to, like the intention itself or faith itself.
The distinction I highlight does not refute the reductivist’s argument. After all, they aren’t saying that intentions, virtues, etc. are consequences, but that we care about them due to their consequences. However, we now have a better understanding of what consequentialists mean when they talk about consequences—namely, that consequences must be some kind of effect in a causal chain. As a result, consequences must have the same properties of effects: they are temporally preceeded by their causes, they are implied by their causes, they are explained by their causes, and so on. This helps us distinguish consequences from other relations. For example, the relation of necessity is different from the relation of causality because it does not have the property of implication (as sunlight is necessary for plants to grow but a plant with adequate sunlight might still wilt from dehydration) and the relation of composition is distinct because it does not have the property of temporal precedence.
It’s also important to note some other key claims of consequentialism. First, consequentialism doesn’t specify what makes a particular consequence good or bad. Although we tend to lump utilitarianism and consequentialism together, we can replace the pleasure principle with any number of alternative values, such as rationality or virtue. A theory that says that people should be honest in order to achieve rationality would be consequentialist, but not utilitarian. As we noted before, consequentialism is about the structure of normative evaluation, not the content. We should also note that consequentialism is often thought of as an objective theory, which means it measures value independent of any individual’s opinion. In other words, a moral theory can be consequentialist even if it doesn’t claim that people should go about the world trying to maximize some consequence. To be consequentialist, moral theories only need to claim that goodness is ultimately measured by consequences, the same way that size is be measured by volume and heaviness is measured by weight. As Henry Sidgwick said, “It is not necessary that the end which gives the criterion of rightness should always be the end at which we consciously aim.” So, a moral theory that claims everyone should act out of a brute sense of benevolence would still be consequentialist if the justification for this universal benevolence is that it brings about peace and minimizes hardship.
With this picture of consequentialism in mind, we can now examine the reductivist argument. As I said before, the reductivist believes that all moral theories can be reduced to consequentialism. The reductivist accomplishes this by drilling down the series of reasons behind why something is good until she reaches a consequence. For example, imagine we are proponents of some non-consequentialist moral theory and we claim that some non-consequence feature X, such as intention or virtue, is the thing that really matters. Seeing that we really believe that our moral theory is not based on consequences, the reductivist will ask, “Why does X matter?” If we respond, “Because of Y,” and Y is a consequence, then the reductivist will claim victory. If not, she will simply ask, “Why does Y matter?” She can carry this on recursively until we finally admit that our theory is ultimately justified by an appeal to consequences, or until run out of justifications and admit that there is nothing really that supports our theory. The strategy here is obvious: the reductivist will either prove that her interlocutor’s theory is consequentialist, or that his theory is ungrounded. In her mind, there is no third option.
Let’s see this in action by applying it to a naive version of divine command theory. The reductivist begins by asking:
“Why is it wrong to kill innocent people for no reason?”
“Because it violates the sixth commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill’.”
“Why should we follow the ten commandments?”
“Because they are the word of God.”
“Why should we obey the word of God?”
“Due to our faith in him.”
“Why should we have faith in God?”
“Because we are told, ‘whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’”
Thus, the reductivist have successfully reduced the command, “Thou shalt not kill,” to a consequence, “everlasting life.” There are other reasons to have faith in God besides this one, and we tend to think that there is something wrong with a person who only believes in order to enter heaven, but at least this kind of person understands the structure underlying his moral beliefs. This is not typical of most people. For an example of the reductivist exposing the ungroundedness of a moral theory, imagine her questioning the average person why racism is bad, which might go something like this:
“Why is racism wrong?”
“Because it discriminates against people based on their race.”
“Why is discrimination wrong?”
“Because it treats one group of people differently from another based on something that shouldn’t matter.”
“So in other words, because it is unfair?”
“Yes.”
“Why is unfairness bad?”
“I don’t know,” or, “Because it just is,” or some circular reason like, “Because it is discriminatory.” These are the cases that I’m calling unjustified or ungrounded. There is no reason to believe that fairness is a normative property we should value. The divine command theorist doesn’t ground his value of everlasting life in anything either, but if we pressed him further, he would probably say that all people want to live forever due to an instinct for survival. The line for what counts as grounds for a reason is hard to draw, but a minimum standard is that one be provided. The average person doesn’t have any objective, metaphysical grounding for why fairness matters.
The reductivist clearly does not think that it’s possible to justify a normative property with anything other than a consequence. How can she be so sure? She can’t, of course—her confidence lies in her prior belief in consequentialism. Someone who assumes that the only consequences matter will find it hard to imagine that anything else could matter. But this belief has intuitive appeal, too. Whenever we decide what we believe or do, we consider the outcomes of our choices. While it is easy to think that this is just another way to say that we consider the consequences of our choices, but we’ve already established that non-consequence outcomes exist. If that type of outcome plays a role in the final justification of a moral theory, then that moral theory would not be consequentialist. In light of this, we have a path forward in rebutting the reductivist.
There are at least two theories that provide this sort of counterexample to the reductivist’s claims: Kantian deontology and Phillippa Foot’s natural goodness. These theories treat actions as the manifestation of some broader property that carries some intrinsic value. In the next section, I will show how this grounds these theories without reducing them to some consequence.
Kantian deontology grounds all moral principles in the categorical imperative, according to which one must act according to a universalizable maxim. These ideas are somewhat hard to grasp, but I will explain all the parts that are required to determine if his theory is consequentialist or not. Anything I don’t explain can be ignored for these purposes. A maxim is a principle of action that is similar to an intention because it can cause or justify an action. The reason why the categorical imperative matters to Kant is because he believes one cannot act rationally and autonomously without adhering to it. This does not mean that one attains rationality and autonomy by acting according to the categorical imperative. It only means that actions abiding by it are rational and autonomous. A conversation between a reductivist and a Kantian might look something like this:
“Why should someone always tell the truth?”
“Because otherwise, you would not act according to a universalizable maxim.”
“Why does that matter?”
“Because the categorical imperative is a requirement for autonomy and rationality.”
“Why are autonomy and rationality good?”
“They just are inherent features of our will. If someone acts with autonomy and rationality, then they are free. If they don’t, then they are not free.”
And now the questioning must stop because we are leaving the realm of normative justification and entering the world of metaphysics. This dialogue is short but illustrative. At no point does the Kantian refer to a consequence of an action or the consequence of a reason. His ultimate reasons of autonomy and rationality are simply properties of the action-producing will; they are not consequences of telling the truth or the categorical imperative. The manifestation of autonomy and rationality in this context is similar to how faith is manifested in good works.
This example shows us two more things. Much like consequentialism, Kantian deontology is an objective theory. It doesn’t track the thought process of a person that adheres to it, it only provides a metric to determine if that person’s actions are rational and autonomous or not. This means that it can be right for a person to aim for certain consequences of his actions, like fulfilling a duty or making the world better in some way, without the theory being consequentialist. This is because the thing that makes his action good is his maxim and not the consequence that he attained. A second point is that the chain of justification ends when we enter the world of metaphysics, but the reductivist’s questioning does not. That is, an action is ultimately justified by some value, but that value must also be justified metaphysically. If the justification of the value is consequentialist, then the reductivist still wins. In this case, I’ve really simplified the Kantian’s metaphysics, so it’s hard to see how autonomy and rationality are justified, but it’s clear that no consequences are invoked. The values fit into a larger picture of human life and the powers of cognition.
Philippa Foot’s natural goodness is an attempt to bridge the is-ought distinction by approaching human goodness in the same way we approach the goodness of a tool or an animal. In her account, a tool is good if it meets its purpose. Similarly, an animal is good if it meets the requirements to live a life characteristic to its species. A wolf is good if it hunts in the pack and lives in a den. A female black widow is good if it eats its mate. If we apply this standard to humans, a given human is good if she has the capacity for a life characteristic for humans. We can see this theory in action if we apply it to the value of fidelity. First, we should observe that humans are fundamentally social animals and rely on each other to survive and reproduce. It is not possible for a single individual to reliably obtain enough food, water, and shelter for himself without the help of others. Moreover, we obtain many social goods through interaction—goods like community and a sense of belonging. At the same time, we are all fundamentally free and therefore cannot be certain that we can count on others. So, we rely on certain social practices, such as promise-keeping, and a person with fidelity will be able to live a characteristic human life while someone who cannot be trusted will not.
At first glance, this seems to clearly be a consequentialist account of fidelity, but Philippa Foot is not saying that people should keep promises so that they are trusted and can take advantage of society. She is describing a relationship of necessity between the concepts of keeping promises, fidelity, the practice of promise-keeping, and characteristic human life. Each is successively necessary for the next, but does not lead to it. If someone does not keep her promises, she does not have fidelity, and thus cannot participate in the practice of promise-keeping, and thus cannot live the characteristic human life. This looks similar to a sequence of consequences because successive steps arise out of prior steps, but in relations of necessity, subsequent steps don’t follow from prior ones. The relationship is negative, not positive. So, we say that if someone breaks their promises, they are bad or defective because they cannot live a characteristic life. However, this does not mean that their promise breaking caused their life to be bad—the badness is not a consequence, but a property that manifests through their actions.
Understanding these fundamental differences between consequentialism and non-consequentialist moral theories is critical to progress in moral philosophy. There are as many ways to justify a moral theory as there are moral theories themselves, and ignoring the vast majority of these due to a belief in reductivism significantly narrows our perspective. Also important is to recognize that consequentialism is not something to be avoided. Consequences clearly play a role in our moral considerations, and this is acknowledged by Kantians and Aristotelians alike. We make progress when we look out to the horizon, not when we myopically retreat to our strongholds. ■
