Do you think that an action ought to be judged morally in terms of its motive, its consequences, something about the nature of the action, or some combination of these? Explain.

Question

Do you think that an action ought to be judged morally in terms of its motive, its consequences, something about the nature of the action, or some combination of these? Explain.

Answer 1

The three most common approaches in ethics are consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics.

1. Consequentialism evaluates the morality of an action (or a rule, etc) in terms of some property of the consequences of the action. One version of consequentialism is utilitarianism. In act-utilitarianism, we add up the pleasure or happiness an action produces (for everyone affected), and then subtract the pain and suffering. The best action is the one that produces the most net happiness.
2. Deontology evaluates the morality of action in terms of whether the action flows from a duty. In a simple form of Kant's version of deontology, what matters is the motive of the agent: If you do something because it is your duty, that's good; if you do it because of some expected benefit to you, you get no credit. What makes something a duty is complicated, but it typically involves being something which can be universalized: that is, we can wish that everyone would do it all the time, and that does not lead us into a contradiction.
3. Virtue ethics evaluates the morality of an action in terms of whether it flows from a good habit or character trait -- a virtue. For example, honesty is a virtue. Honest people are praiseworthy. It may be that honesty causes some pain in a particular case; it may be that we can't consistently say that everyone should universally be honest at all times; but nevertheless, if I tell the truth as a matter of habit, then I deserve credit for honesty. In Aristotle's version, a virtue (like honesty) is usually a mean between extremes of doing too much (telling someone that his tie is ugly, when he didn't ask) and too little (lying to protect his feelings, when he does ask about the tie).

Which of these do I think is the right account? That's a long story. But I think the most important thing is that for a good 90% of cases -- I just made that number up -- all three accounts give the same answer. Usually, when a person does something good, they have a good motive, they produce a good result, and it's part of a good pattern of behavior (a virtue). The opposite is the case for bad actions. I think it's relatively uncommon for the different moral criteria to diverge significantly, though philosophers like to focus on cases where they do -- so-called "conflict cases".

In ordinary life, people who are not philosophers will mix and match all three of these approaches, along with others like traditional religious ethics. Personally, I think that's fine. Having the multiple theories to draw ideally gives us more ways to analyze and solve difficult problems. It's only a problem if someone cherrypicks whatever theory gives them the result they want in a given case, without worrying about consistency. That's "motivated reasoning", a very common cognitive bias.