Act Consequentialism without Free Rides

Abstract

Consequentialist theories determine rightness solely based on real or expected consequences. Although such theories are popular, they often have difficulty with generalizing intuitions, which, in their pre-theoretic form, require concern for the question “What if everybody did that?” When generalizing versions of consequentialism have been attempted, as with rule consequentialism, the results are messy. We claim that the conceptual apparatus currently employed in generalizing consequentialism is not adequate to the task. Just as decision theory is crucial to modern consequentialism for handling uncertainty, so too is it crucial for handling generalization. Here, we present a relatively new decision theory, functional decision theory, that will allow us to sketch a theory of generalized act consequentialism. We argue that this theory is superior to rule consequentialism both in modeling the actual reasoning of generalizers and in delivering correct results.