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Historically, hedonistic utilitarianism is the paradigmatic example of a consequentialist moral theory. It can be argued that the existence of phenomenal consciousness and " qualia" is required for the experience of pleasure or pain to have an ethical significance. Happiness, in this account, is defined as the maximization of pleasure and the minimization of pain. In summary, Jeremy Bentham states that people are driven by their interests and their fears, but their interests take precedence over their fears their interests are carried out in accordance with how people view the consequences that might be involved with their interests. Jeremy Bentham, The Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789) Ch I, p 1 Derek Parfit argued that in practice, when understood properly, rule consequentialism, Kantian deontology and contractualism would all end up prescribing the same behavior. Similarly, Robert Nozick argued for a theory that is mostly consequentialist, but incorporates inviolable "side-constraints" which restrict the sort of actions agents are permitted to do.
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Scanlon advances the idea that human rights, which are commonly considered a "deontological" concept, can only be justified with reference to the consequences of having those rights.
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Some argue that consequentialist theories (such as utilitarianism) and deontological theories (such as Kantian ethics) are not necessarily mutually exclusive. It is also contrasted with virtue ethics, which focuses on the character of the agent rather than on the nature or consequences of the act (or omission) itself, and pragmatic ethics which treats morality like science: advancing collectively as a society over the course of many lifetimes, such that any moral criterion is subject to revision. Different consequentialist theories differ in how they define moral goods, with chief candidates including pleasure, the absence of pain, the satisfaction of one's preferences, and broader notions of the "general good".Ĭonsequentialism is usually contrasted with deontological ethics (or deontology), in that deontology, in which rules and moral duty are central, derives the rightness or wrongness of one's conduct from the character of the behaviour itself rather than the outcomes of the conduct. Consequentialists hold in general that an act is right if and only if the act (or in some views, the rule under which it falls) will produce, will probably produce, or is intended to produce, a greater balance of good over evil than any available alternative. Consequentialism, along with eudaimonism, falls under the broader category of teleological ethics, a group of views which claim that the moral value of any act consists in its tendency to produce things of intrinsic value. Thus, from a consequentialist standpoint, a morally right act (or omission from acting) is one that will produce a good outcome. In ethical philosophy, consequentialism is a class of normative, teleological ethical theories that holds that the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for judgment about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct.