Not quite non-consequentialism: the implications of Pettit’s “Three Mistakes about Doing Good (and Bad)” for metaphysics and moral philosophy

Abstract

As its title indicates, Philip Pettit’s “Three Mistakes about Doing Good (and Bad)” identifies and rejects three common claims restricting what can count as a good (or bad ) effect of action. The key question here is how do we work out how much good you have brought about by your action? The first common claim is that only causal effects or consequences of action can count as goods that are brought about by an action. The second, that we can only count behavioural effects of action. The third, that we can only count consequences of “an all-or-nothing or on-off or discrete kind”. Pettit argues that all three of these claims are mistaken: the first claim is mistaken because our actions can bring about goods that are constitutive consequences of those actions; the second claim is mistaken because the good consequences of an action can depend upon the agent having acted out of certain dispositions; the third claim is mistaken because the good consequences of an action can include the extra effects of pursuing more basic good consequences (such as benefits to others) in a more deliberate or reliable manner.

As Pettit notes, these “mistakes” could be defended in two ways. They could be defended on the basis of a theory of the good, such as Hedonistic Utilarianism, on which there are no goods that can be anything other than all-or-nothing causal consequences of behaviour. Pettit gives examples of constitutive, disposition-based and non-discrete goods.

The second, more interesting defence of the three “mistakes” appeals to a theory of action, which Pettit calls “the production model of action” , upon which even if we recognise constitutive, disposition-based and non-discrete goods, these goods cannot be brought about by actions. Pettit offers an alternative model of action, the Control Model, which he argues can make sense of constitutive, disposition-based, non-discrete goods as effects of actions – and is also independently plausible.

Pettit’s paper is designed to have important implications for both metaphysics and moral philosophy. In metaphysics, Pettit uncovers some of the worrying implications of a dominant model of action and provides an interesting alternative. In moral philosophy, Pettit aims to “open up the prospect of reducing the gap between the consequentialist doctrine that acting well is always a function of doing … good and non-consequentialist theories that make it a function of other factors alone or of other factors as well.” The idea is that many of things that non-consequentialists are typically concerned about can count as the good effects of an action. Pettit says: “That makes it much more plausible to think that acting well is a significant function of how much your action thereby improves or promises to improve the world.”

In the next sections, I will give a slightly more fleshed out summary of Pettit’s argument. I will then offer a criticism of Pettit’s argument for the Control Model of Action, suggesting that its initially plausibility is not neutral between different conceptions of the good. Finally, I will try to elucidate Pettit’s claim about the moral implications of his argument and argue that while Pettit is certainly right that his conclusions leave neutral consequentialism much more plausible and significantly narrow the gaps between consequentialism and non-consequentialists, we should be careful not to overstate the degree of convergence achieved. Pettit’s neutral consequentialism retains very counter-intuitive implications. Anyone who rejected earlier forms of consequentialism due to their counter-intuitive implications is likely to still find Pettit’s more sophisticated version implausible.

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