The following comments on this post are preserved:
Anonymous asks: Re: Sanford's interpretation of Aristotle: What does it mean for an ethics to be teleological but not consequentialist? I've done some internet research on this but could find no clear distinction.
Greg S. replies: As Ben says, the paradigm case of a consequentialist is Mill, and the paradigm teleologist is Aristotle. Whether one thinks of these two terms as essentially the same, and, if not, just how one distinguishes them, depends on how much significance one accords to each of several similarities and differences between such ethicists and between them and such ethicists as Kant. So like all issues of classifying philosophers, this is a substantial philosophical question in its own right.
But without weighing in on which of the similarities and differences are most important, let me just list a few:
1. Mill, Moore, and other consequentialists at least tend to treat the goodness of an end as impersonal, rather than seeing it as tied to an agent. We can see this in Mill's proof of the principle of utility (which Ben discussed) and in Moore'd insistence that the idea of an agent's good is incoherent, unless it means either something good that the agent happens to have or a state of affairs they is good and consists in the agent's having something. By contrast, for Aristotle, an end or good is always the end of good of something or someone.
2. Relatedly, consequentialists (almost always) view goods as effects or actions that are fully distinct from the actions themselves and valuable in isolation from them, whereAd for Aristotelians actions can be wholly or partially constitutive of their ends. Indeed Aristotle thinks that the ultimate end has to be an activity that is worth engaging in for its own sake.
3. Consequentialists generally conceive of the good as something that in principle can be increased without limit--for example the amount of pleasure in the world--whereas teleologists think of it more as an ideal to be realized or approximated.
Summing these up, I think that teleologists think of goodness in terms of goals achievable by agents in action which give a point to those actions. Consequentialists think of goodness simply as a property of certain states of affairs, and they don't see this as essentially depending on any connection to actions and agents (though, of course, they think it has implications for what actions agents should take).
But again, how important one thinks these differences are and just how they're related will depend on where one comes down on various other issues.
Ben B. replies: That's a good and important question, I think. Consequentialism and teleology are often run together, and this is understandable. Both, after all, see goals or ends as essential to value. Consequentialists say morality consists of achieving some goal, usually maximizing some quantity, like the greatest happiness for the greatest number.
But consider Aristotle, for instance. He is clearly a teleologist because he thinks virtue aims at an end, at eudaemonia or the fine. But Aristotle is not a consequentialist. There are several ways to see this even from the perspective of conventional interpretations of consequentialism. For Aristotle, to be virtuous you must do the right thing for the right reason, with the right motive, etc. None of these considerations really matter for consequentialists in the end. Mill, for instance, says that the morally right act may result from any number of possible motives. For him, all that matters is the effects of an action, not where it comes from. For Aristotle, the effects matter, but only insofar as they are the effects an agent aims at.
Note this also distinguishes Aristotle from Kant, who thinks goals and ends don't matter at all. Consequentialists characteristically focus on consequences to the exclusion of motive, whereas deontologists focus on motive to the exclusion of consequences. Clearly there is room for a third theory that sees each of these factors as inseparable: a teleological theory.
But you might think that while Aristotle's teleology is distinct from utilitarianism, that doesn't mean it's not a form of consequentialism. I disagree. It is important that for consequentialists, the goal to be achieved here is an impersonal goal. For Mill, for instance, your action is right just in case it maximizes the general happiness, even though it might involve your own sacrifice. What I think Rand's metaethics helps to make clear is that a goal that is held distinct from or in opposition to your own needs and interests cannot be of value. It cannot even really be a goal.
Consequentialism holds certain "goals" as intrinsic values, certain states of affairs that are valuable in and of themselves. That means they are not valuable to anyone in particular. That has to be true of utilitarianism, for instance, because there is no entity to whom the sum of society's happiness is actually of value, and it is not valuable for anything. Rand's metaethics clarifies how the concept of "value" derives from the concept of "life": if there were no living things, nothing would be of value to anything or for anything. But to hold the maximization of some impersonal quantity as a value as utilitarians do is therefore to steal the concept of "value." It's even to steal the concept of "goal." People who believe in utilitarianism can treat it as a "goal," but because it doesn't relate to the actual needs of their life, it's a "goal" only in a derivative and corrupted sense.
What that amounts to is that a view like consequentialism that holds as a "goal" the maximization of an impersonal quantity unrelated to the needs of living organisms is not even treating the achievement of real goals as necessary for moral value. So it is not really even teleological. So teleological views like Aristotle's and Rand's are in a distinct category from consequentialism, even if consequentialists sometimes speak as if their theory is teleological. I suspect that if you push the deontologists, you'll find that they have similar problems with claiming that moral rightness is all about the motive. Can something really be a motive if it's not related to a goal?
By the way, there's important material on the distinction between Rand's views and consequentialism in the forthcoming Blackwell Companion to Ayn Rand. Get your hands on a copy if you can!
Greg S. wonders: I wonder what Stanford means by "selfless and generic benevolence," and what texts from Aristotle he’s drawing on. In particular I wonder what the connection is supposed to be between the selflessness and genericness of benevolence according to the view Stanford is criticizing, and is he saying that Aristotelian ethics rejects the conjunction or that it rejects both conjuncts? Rand, as I understand her, rejects the idea that benevolence can be selfless, since she thinks that selflessness breeds resentment, and that genuine benevolence can only flow from egoism. But she does endorse a “generic” benevolence, if this means a benevolence that’s directed towards humanity in general, in view of general human potentialities, rather than towards specific people or groups in view of their specific realizations of these potentialities.
Harry B. replies: I would assume that "generic" benevolence is a state of indifference to the personal qualities of the recipient. As you point out, one can read it as regard for the general human potential. But if that's what Stanford meant, wouldn't he have written "generalized benevolence"? Additionally, I don't see anything in *that* that would be rejected by Aristotle. It seems orthogonal to Aristotle's concerns.
So if he's concerned to make a point about virtue ethicists drifting away from Aristotle, mustn't it be that he's deploring the attempt to assimilate Aristotle to more Christian/Kantian approaches?
The following comments on this post are preserved:
Anonymous asks: Re: Sanford's interpretation of Aristotle: What does it mean for an ethics to be teleological but not consequentialist? I've done some internet research on this but could find no clear distinction.
Greg S. replies: As Ben says, the paradigm case of a consequentialist is Mill, and the paradigm teleologist is Aristotle. Whether one thinks of these two terms as essentially the same, and, if not, just how one distinguishes them, depends on how much significance one accords to each of several similarities and differences between such ethicists and between them and such ethicists as Kant. So like all issues of classifying philosophers, this is a substantial philosophical question in its own right.
But without weighing in on which of the similarities and differences are most important, let me just list a few:
1. Mill, Moore, and other consequentialists at least tend to treat the goodness of an end as impersonal, rather than seeing it as tied to an agent. We can see this in Mill's proof of the principle of utility (which Ben discussed) and in Moore'd insistence that the idea of an agent's good is incoherent, unless it means either something good that the agent happens to have or a state of affairs they is good and consists in the agent's having something. By contrast, for Aristotle, an end or good is always the end of good of something or someone.
2. Relatedly, consequentialists (almost always) view goods as effects or actions that are fully distinct from the actions themselves and valuable in isolation from them, whereAd for Aristotelians actions can be wholly or partially constitutive of their ends. Indeed Aristotle thinks that the ultimate end has to be an activity that is worth engaging in for its own sake.
3. Consequentialists generally conceive of the good as something that in principle can be increased without limit--for example the amount of pleasure in the world--whereas teleologists think of it more as an ideal to be realized or approximated.
Summing these up, I think that teleologists think of goodness in terms of goals achievable by agents in action which give a point to those actions. Consequentialists think of goodness simply as a property of certain states of affairs, and they don't see this as essentially depending on any connection to actions and agents (though, of course, they think it has implications for what actions agents should take).
But again, how important one thinks these differences are and just how they're related will depend on where one comes down on various other issues.
Ben B. replies: That's a good and important question, I think. Consequentialism and teleology are often run together, and this is understandable. Both, after all, see goals or ends as essential to value. Consequentialists say morality consists of achieving some goal, usually maximizing some quantity, like the greatest happiness for the greatest number.
But consider Aristotle, for instance. He is clearly a teleologist because he thinks virtue aims at an end, at eudaemonia or the fine. But Aristotle is not a consequentialist. There are several ways to see this even from the perspective of conventional interpretations of consequentialism. For Aristotle, to be virtuous you must do the right thing for the right reason, with the right motive, etc. None of these considerations really matter for consequentialists in the end. Mill, for instance, says that the morally right act may result from any number of possible motives. For him, all that matters is the effects of an action, not where it comes from. For Aristotle, the effects matter, but only insofar as they are the effects an agent aims at.
Note this also distinguishes Aristotle from Kant, who thinks goals and ends don't matter at all. Consequentialists characteristically focus on consequences to the exclusion of motive, whereas deontologists focus on motive to the exclusion of consequences. Clearly there is room for a third theory that sees each of these factors as inseparable: a teleological theory.
But you might think that while Aristotle's teleology is distinct from utilitarianism, that doesn't mean it's not a form of consequentialism. I disagree. It is important that for consequentialists, the goal to be achieved here is an impersonal goal. For Mill, for instance, your action is right just in case it maximizes the general happiness, even though it might involve your own sacrifice. What I think Rand's metaethics helps to make clear is that a goal that is held distinct from or in opposition to your own needs and interests cannot be of value. It cannot even really be a goal.
Consequentialism holds certain "goals" as intrinsic values, certain states of affairs that are valuable in and of themselves. That means they are not valuable to anyone in particular. That has to be true of utilitarianism, for instance, because there is no entity to whom the sum of society's happiness is actually of value, and it is not valuable for anything. Rand's metaethics clarifies how the concept of "value" derives from the concept of "life": if there were no living things, nothing would be of value to anything or for anything. But to hold the maximization of some impersonal quantity as a value as utilitarians do is therefore to steal the concept of "value." It's even to steal the concept of "goal." People who believe in utilitarianism can treat it as a "goal," but because it doesn't relate to the actual needs of their life, it's a "goal" only in a derivative and corrupted sense.
What that amounts to is that a view like consequentialism that holds as a "goal" the maximization of an impersonal quantity unrelated to the needs of living organisms is not even treating the achievement of real goals as necessary for moral value. So it is not really even teleological. So teleological views like Aristotle's and Rand's are in a distinct category from consequentialism, even if consequentialists sometimes speak as if their theory is teleological. I suspect that if you push the deontologists, you'll find that they have similar problems with claiming that moral rightness is all about the motive. Can something really be a motive if it's not related to a goal?
By the way, there's important material on the distinction between Rand's views and consequentialism in the forthcoming Blackwell Companion to Ayn Rand. Get your hands on a copy if you can!
Greg S. wonders: I wonder what Stanford means by "selfless and generic benevolence," and what texts from Aristotle he’s drawing on. In particular I wonder what the connection is supposed to be between the selflessness and genericness of benevolence according to the view Stanford is criticizing, and is he saying that Aristotelian ethics rejects the conjunction or that it rejects both conjuncts? Rand, as I understand her, rejects the idea that benevolence can be selfless, since she thinks that selflessness breeds resentment, and that genuine benevolence can only flow from egoism. But she does endorse a “generic” benevolence, if this means a benevolence that’s directed towards humanity in general, in view of general human potentialities, rather than towards specific people or groups in view of their specific realizations of these potentialities.
Harry B. replies: I would assume that "generic" benevolence is a state of indifference to the personal qualities of the recipient. As you point out, one can read it as regard for the general human potential. But if that's what Stanford meant, wouldn't he have written "generalized benevolence"? Additionally, I don't see anything in *that* that would be rejected by Aristotle. It seems orthogonal to Aristotle's concerns.
So if he's concerned to make a point about virtue ethicists drifting away from Aristotle, mustn't it be that he's deploring the attempt to assimilate Aristotle to more Christian/Kantian approaches?