PHIL 1550 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Shelly Kagan, Consequentialism, Deontological Ethics
Document Summary
Such cases show us that something else matters in morality besides results. Or so it is claimed cases like this arouse deontological qualms : kagan wants to address another sort of problematic case for consequentialism. A certain number of people perhaps a large number of people have the ability to perform an act of a given kind. And if a large enough group of people do perform the act in question then the results will be bad overall. However and this is the crucial point in the relevant cases it seems that it makes no difference to the outcome what any given individual does. : this sort of case might even be worse for consequentialism. Consequentialism appears to fail even with consequences and nothing but consequences the acts in question need to be condemned because of the results [of] everyone"s performing them