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CONSEQUENTIAL EVALUATION AND PRACTICAL REASON*

T he subject of this essay is the relevance and reach of conse-quential evaluation in practical reason. A good starting pointfor this analysis, I argue, is the need to take responsibility for

the consequences of one's choice. The demands of responsibility ofthe person making a choice (of actions, strategies, or other decisionvariables in practical reason) relate both to (1) the discipline ofevaluation,and to (2) the discipline of choicebased on that evaluation.Because of these disciplines, consequential evaluation can, I argue,systematically combine very diverse concerns, including taking re-sponsibility for the nature of one's actions (and related consider-ations that have figured prominently in the deontologicalliterature),without neglecting other types of consequences (on which some ofthe narrower versions of consequential reasoning-such as utilitari-anism-have tended to concentrate). There are advantages, I argue,in a broad but integrated fra~ework of this kind.

This paper is about consequential evaluation seen as the disciplineof responsible choice based on the chooser's evaluation of states ofaffairs, including consideration of all the relevant consequencesviewed in the liglit of the exact circumstances of that choice. It is notabout how the commonly used term 'consequentialism' should beused. Whether consequential evaluation, as exploredpere, should becalled by the name 'consequentialism' or not is a subsidiary and

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* The essay draws on my Rosenthal Lectures at the Northwestern University LawSchool in Chicago, given in September 1998, under the title "The Domain ofjustice." For helpful comments, I am grateful to Ron Allen, Sudhir Anand, Eliza-beth Anderson, Christian Barry, Akeel Bilgrami, G.A. Cohen, Susan Hurley, IsaacLevi, Martha Nussbaum, Onora O'Neill, Philip Pettit, and Thomas Scanlon, and tothe participants in seminar discussions at the Northwestern Law School, and atCambridge, Oxford, and Columbia University.

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478 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHYCONSEQUENTIAL EVALUATION AND PRACTICAL REASON 479

rather uninteresting issue. The fact is that the term 'consequential-ism' was devised by enemies rather than proponents of consequentialevaluation, and it has been invoked mainly to be refuted, often withcolorful counterexamples that have added some spice-and muchfun-in moral philosophy. To admit to being a "consequentialist" isalmost like introducing oneself as a "wog" or a "frog" or a "limey,"which can be instantly delineating without being descriptively rich.Indeed, the term is unattractive enough (even if it did not remindone of diseases like botulism) to be sensibly bequeathed to anyonewho wants to take it away.

As it happens, however, my characterization of consequential eval-uation is not in conflict with at least one standard definition of

consequentialism as the requirement that any choice of actions (orrules, or strategies, or whatever) be based on selecting an alternativethat produces no worse an overall outcome than any other availablealternative. For example, it is entirely compatible with Philip Pettit'sdefinition of consequentialism, as presented in the introduction tohis distinguished collection of essays on this subject, called Consequen-tialism.l "Roughly speaking," Pettit says, "consequentialism is thetheory that the way to tell whether a particular choice is the rightchoice for an agent to have made is to look at the relevant conse-quences of the decision; to look at the relevant effects of the decisionon the world" (-ibid.,p. xiii). His definition also has the merit of

linking the exercise of choice immediately to the idea of takingresponsibility for the consequences of one's choice, and is thus closeto the approach explored in this essay.

The discipline of this responsibility has not alwaysbeen adequately- recognized within consequentialist ethics. The standard versions of

utilitarian ethics have been, I would argue, especially short in this, inparticular through ignoring all consequences other than utilities,

even when they are part an? parcel of the state of affairs (forexample, the actions of particular agents that have actually oc-curred). This has followed from the utilitarian program of combin-

ing consequentialism with additional demands, particularly"welfarism," which insists that states of affairs must be judged exclu-sively by the utility information (such as happiness or desire fulfill-

ment) related to the respective states-no matter what the ptherfeatures of the consequent state of affairs may be, such as th~ per-

formance of particular acts (however nasty), or the violation of otherpeople's liberties (however personal).2

Also, "critics" of consequential evaluation often do not take suffi-cient note of the reach of consequential reasoning shorn of thearbitrary limits imposed by such additional restrictions as welfarism.Indeed, since these additional constraints also reduce the opportu-nity of taking adequate note of the responsibilities of consequentialevaluation, a critic of consequential evaluation who assumes thatthese constraints must be a part of that evaluation is led to do far lessthan justice to the potential reach and extensive relevance of conse-quential reasoning.

How, then, does broad consequential evaluation compare withdeontological approaches? This comparison is difficult to make be-cause deontology can take very many different forms. Some deonto-logical approaches have very limited reach because of their insistenceon making consequence-independentjudgments (I shall presently con-sider a classic argument of this kind). Others allow particular conse-quences to be considered, but rule out the possibility of some or alltrade-oilsin taking note of diverse concerns (libertarian deontology isa prominent example of this and imposes various nonrelaxable con-straints).3 In contrast, some permissive deontologists seem to admitmany different kinds of concerns, if only in stages.4 Trade-offs seemto be allowed, in effect, when the different conflicting concerns arebalanced against each other in broad deontological analysis, even ifthe overall discipline of these broad-based judgments remains some-what veiled and unexplicit.5

] Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1993.

21ndeed, utiJitarian reasoning is an amalgam of three distinct axioms: (1) con7sequentialism, (2) welfarism, and (3) sum ranking (the last stands for the require-ment that utilities of different people must simply be added up to assess the state ofaffairs, paying no attention to, say, inequalities). On the factorization of utilitari-anism, see my "Utilitarianism and Welfarism," this JOURNAL,LXXVI,9 (September1979): 463-89; and Sen and Bernard Williams, eds., Utilitarianism and Beyond (NewYork: Cambridge, 1982)-see particularly our "Introduction."

3 The most elegant exposition of the libertarian approach can be found in RobertNozick, Anarchy, State and UtojJia(New York: Basic, 1974).

4Well illustrated by the variety of arguments on different sides that get sympa-thetic hearing in Williams's broad deontological analysis; see, for example, his "ACritique of Utilitarianism," in JJ.C. Smart and Williams, Utilitarianism: For andAgainst (New York: Cambridge, 1973). See also Thomas Nagel, Mortal Question>(New York: Cambridge, 1979); Derek Partit, Reasons and Persons (New York: Oxford,1984); Thomas Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge: Harvard, 1999);among other contributions.

5 I have argued elsewhere that the substantive gap between some versions ofbroad deontology and broad consequentialism may not be very great; see my"Evaluator Relativity and Consequential Evaluation," Philosojihy (wd Public AjJaiTS,

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480 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY CONSEQUENTIAL EVALUATION AND PRACTICAL REASON 481

It is, thus, difficult to give one simple answer to the question that maywell be asked: 'Why use broad consequential evaluation, rather thandeontology?' The contrast depends on what kind of deontology is beingconsidered in the comparison. In contrast with consequence-independentdeontology, or trade-oj}barreddeontology, broad consequential evalua-tion has considerably more reach and range, in being able to accom-modate diverse moral concerns that have claims to our attention. In

comparison with permissive kinds of deontology, broad consequentialevaluation can claim to have, at least, a more explicit-and somewhatmore integrated-framework of judgmental evaluation.

There is, in fact, a further argument, which I shall not explore inany detail, but to which I shall point (since it is, I believe, of someimportance in seeing the advantages of broad consequential reason-ing). By linking ideas of "goodness" and "rightness" in a general andconsolidated framework, an adequately broad consequential frame-work avoids the kind of alienation that seems to be involved in such

statements (frequently invoked, in one form or another, in highdeontology): "This would be ethically the best thing to do; howeverfor ethical reasons, I must not do it."6 Ethics is complicated enoughbecause of our different moral beliefs and the external disagreements\ve all tend to face, and it is unfortunate to have to add to all this somesigns of internal tension as well.

1. CONSEQUENTIAL EVALUATION AND CONSEQUENCE-INDEPENDENTDEONTOLOGY

I begin, however, not with contemporary debates, but one that isreported to have occurred more than two millennia ago. In theIndian epic, the Mahabhamta, the composition of which is usually

-attributed to the period around the second or third century beforeChrist, there is an interesting conversation that occurs between Ar-

juna, the great warrior hero of the epic, and Krishna, his friend andadvisor, on the eve of the massive battle at Kurukshetra (not far fromthe city of Delhi). The battle is between the Pandavas, the virtuousroyal family presided over by Yudhisthira, Arjuna's eldest brother andlegitimate heir to the throne, and the Kauravas, their cousins, who

have wrongly usurped the kingdom. Nearly all the other royal fami-

lies in the Indo-Gangetic plain have joined one side or the other, andthe two armies include a considerable proportion of able-bodied menin the land.

As Arjuna and Krishna see the armies on the two sides and reflecton the gigantic battle that is about to begin, Arjuna asks whether allthis is worth it. He does not doubt that theirs is the right cause, andthat this is ajust war, and also that his side will definitely win the battlegiven its relative strength-not least because of AIjuna's own remark-able skills as a warrior and a general. But, Arjt.l1a observes, so manypeople will die in this battle. He also recognizes that he himself willhave to kill masses of people. Aljuna also notes that many people whowill be killed, on both sides, are persons for whom he has affection,and many of them have done nothing that is particularly disreputableother than agreeing (often out of kinship loyalties or other ties) toback one side or. the other in this great subcontinental battle.

Aljuna tells Krishna that he does not want to fight, and that maybethey should simply let the unjust Kauravas rule the kingdom they.have usurped, which may be the lesser of the two evils. Krishna arguesagainst this, and his response takes the form of articulating principlesof action that have been repeated again and again in Indian moralphilosophy. Indeed, with Krishna's gradual transformation from be-ing a noble but partisan patron of the Pandavas in the epic to beingan incarnation of God, as he is in later Hinduism, the conversationwith AIjuna has become a document of great theological importance,called the Bhagavadgeeta,or the Geetafor short.

Krishna points to Arjuna's duty to fight, irrespective of his evalua-tion of the consequences. It is a just cause, and as a warrior and ageneral on whom his side must rely, he cannot waver from hisobligations (no matter what results from that). Krishna's high deon-tology has been-deeply influential in moral debates in the subsequentmillennia. It is, I suppose, a tribute to the power of pure theory thateven Mahatma Gandhi-no less-felt deeply inspired by Krishna'swords on doing one's duty irrespective of consequences, even thoughthe duty in this case was for Arjuna to fight a violent war (not ingeneral a cause to which Gandhi could be expected to warm).

Krishna's moral position is also eloquently endorsed by T.S. Eliot,in a poem, "The Dry Salvages," in the Four Quartets.?Eliot summarizesKrishna's view in the form of an admonishment: "And do not think of

the fruit of action./ Fare forward." Eliot explains: "Not fare well,/ Butfare forward, voyagers"(ibid., p. 31). I intend here to take the other

XII, 2 (Spring 1983): 113-32. It is partly a question of what are made explicit andwhat are weighed into the judgment in somewhat implicit ways.

GFor related issues, see Peter Railton, "Alienation, Consequentialism, and theDemands of Morality," Philosojihy and Public Affairs, XIII, 2 (Spring 1984): 14-171;and Samuel Scheffler, "Agent-Centred Restriction, Rationality, and the Virtues,"Mind, XCIV,,\75 (1985): 409-19; both reprinted in Schemer, Consequentialismand ItsCritics (New York: Oxford, 1988), pp. 93-133, 243-60. 7 London: Faber and Faber, 1944.

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482 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY CONSEQUENTIAL EVALUATION AND PRACTICAL REASON 483

side-that ofAljuna-and proceed from the basic idea that one musttake responsibility for the consequences of one's actions and choices,and that this responsibility cannot be obliterated by any pointer to aconsequence-independent duty or obligation. "Fare," I would argue,"well," and not just "forward." I should add, just as an incidentalmatter, that even though as a religious document the Geetais inter-preted to be firmly on Krishna's side (it is alleged that he "won" thedebate), the epic Mahabharata in which the conversation originallyoccurs gives both sides much room to develop their respective argu-ments, with the evident presumption that this is an argument inwhich there are two reasonable sides.

II. GENERAL CONSEQUENTIALISM AND PARTICULAR CONSEQUENTIALISTSYSTEMS

Consequential evaluation can be analyzed at two different levels.First, we can study the general demands of basing evaluation andchoice on the assessment of consequences and, at this common level,the discipline of consequential evaluation leaves room for differentways of getting to a fuller consequentialist theory. Second, this gen-eral analysis can be combined with the exploration of a specificevaluative theory, or a class of evaluative theories that share theimportant feature of focusing on responsibility for choice. I amconcerned here with both these exercises.

In the general analysis, it is especially important to recognize thatthe very specific demands associated with some of the more famousconsequentialist systems, such as welfarism (on which utilitarian eth-ical theory relies), are not requiredby the discipline of consequential-ism itself. It may be, arguably, permissible to combine theseadditional demands ",rith consequential evaluation (as utilitarianismdoes).8 But they are certainly not mandatory for consequential eval-uation in general. I have commented on this subject already. Butnow, going beyond this, I must also discuss what kind of furtherspecification may be sensibly pursued to get a fuller consequentialtheory (different from utilitarianism)-a theory or an approach thatwould be particularly in line with the basic motivation of takingresponsibility for one's choice. To that exercise I shall now turn,

beginning first with identifying particular areas in which furtherspecification-additional to the general demands of consequentialevaluation-would have to be made. '

There is a need, I would argue, for more articulation on at leastthree different subjects, related to the discipline of consequentialevaluation.

(1) Situated evaluation. From which perspective should the evaluation bedone? The argument from responsibility would indicate that theperson making the choice cannot escape the necessity to take noteof her own position vis-a.-visthe actions and their consequences.This requirement of "situated evaluation" mayor may not be com-bined with the demand (made familiar by utilitarian ethics) that theevaluationfrom everysituated position must somehowbe exactly thesame. This is an "invariance requirement" for which an additionalargument wol.lld be needed, if it were to be proposed.9 But I do notintend to propose it.

(2) Maximizingframework. ABSamuel Scheffler1O rightly points out, "max-imizingrationality" is centr;al to consequential evaluation. ABhe putsit: "The core of this conception of rationality is the idea that if oneaccepts the desirability of a certain goal being achieved, and if onehas a choice between two options, one of which is certain to accom-plish this goal better than the other, then it is, ceterisparibus,rationalto choose the former over the latter" (ibid., p. 252). I shall have totalk more, later on, about the extensive implications of this princi-ple, but one immediate question concerns whether the maximizingframework can be used even when the options cannot be completelyranked vis-a.-viseach other. What if the evaluation cannot sensibly gobeyond, say, a partial ordering? ABwould be readily seen, Scheffler'sstatement of the maximizing principle does not demand complete-ness of ranking. But is his silence on completeness an omission, oris his characterization of maximization adequate as it stands? Iwould argue that there is no omission here, but I must go furtherinto this issue (more on this presently). I should state here, how-ever, that not to demand completeness does not exclude the possi-bility that the evaluative ordering may, in fact, be complete. Ifcompleteness were to be specifically demanded (rather than onlypermitted), however, then some justification for this demand wouldbe needed. But I make no such demand.

8 I say 'arguably' here, because it can also be argued, on the other side, that byconfining attention to utility information only, welfarism goes against the spirit oftaking responsibility for all the consequences of one's choice. I do not, however,intend to insist, on this ground, that we exclude utilitarianism from the class ofgenuinely consequentialist theories altogether. It is, rather, my claim that utilitar-ianism is deeply flawed as a substantive consequentialist theory, and this is where itstension with the basic motivation of taking responsibility for choice comes in. Theproblem lies, on this reading, in its inadequacy, rather than in its inadmissibility.

9 On the nature and use of "invariance requirements," see my CollectiveChoiceandSocial Welfare (San Francisco: Holden-Day, 1970; republished: Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1979), especially chapters 7 and 8; and Kevin Roberts, "Possibility Theo-rems with Interpersonally Comparable Welfare Levels," Reviw of Economic Studies,XLVII,2: 409-20.

10"Agent-Centred Restriction, Rationality, and the Virtues" (1985), reprinted inConsequentialism and Its Critics. .

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484 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY CONSEQUENTIAL EVALUATION AND PRACTICAL REASON 485

(3) Nonexclusion of state components. Are all features of the consequentstates of affairs potentially relevant? In terms of the discipline ofconsequential evaluation, it would be arbitrary to exclude a priori anyparticular component of the state as being beyond the pale of consid-eration. This requirement of "nonexclusion of state components" doesnot, by itself; rule out the possibility of insisting, as is done in utilitarianethics, that only utilities(in the form of, say, happiness or desire fulfill-ment) in the states of affairs must ultimately be taken into account inethical evaluation. If that substantive restriction were to be imposed,then ajustificatory defense of it would have been needed (since it is notentailed by the discipline of consequential evaluation in general). ButI irbpose no such restriction.

events and of her responsibility for things that may happen as a resultof what she does.

This valuational issue raises a question of great importance regard-ing the relationship between the person who is doing the evaluation(as well as the choosing) and the particular circumstances in whichshe is situated. Arjuna is bothered not merely by the fact that manywill die if the war were to take place, but also by the fact that he willhimself be killing lots of people and by the further fact that many ofthe people to be killed are persons for whom he himself has affection.These are the things that contribute to the bad nature of the eventsthat would occur due to the war, seen particularly from the positionof AIjuna himself. This realization is part and parcel of his takingresponsibility for his choices and their consequences. Another ob- .server who is uninvolved in these events need not attach any specialimportance to the fact that Arjuna (not he,but Arjuna) will be killingpeople, and that among the dead will be people for whom Arjuna(not he, but Arjuna) feels closeness and affection. Arjuna cannotreasonably take a similarly detached view of the consequences of hischoice, since he is directly involved in making this choice.

The evaluations can, thus, be reasonably situated in the life of theperson doing the evaluation and making the choices. This contrastsquite sharply with the utilitarian formula that the evaluation must be,in every way, independent of the evaluator and, in particular, musttake the very specific form of maximizing the sum total of utilities.Such has been the hold of utilitarianism within the general disciplineof consequential evaluation that rather than taking the utilitarianclaim of evaluator-independence as a very special case (at best admis-sible and certainly not mandatory), consequentialism is often definedas having to depend inescapably on evaluator-independent valua-tions. ,

I should also comment on the fact that the discipline of position-related evaluator~relativity, the fuller implications of which I havetried to explore elsewhere, II must be distinguished from a claim that

anyone is free to evaluate cpnsequences as he likes. Far from beingfree to evaluate consequences as he likes, Arjuna has the responsibil-ity-indeed cannot escape the responsibility-to take note of the spe-cial badness of the events as he must evaluate them, because hehimself would have to do some of the killing, and victims would oftenbe quite innocent persons for whom Arjuna has affection. It is not so

I shall now briefly outline the broad characteristics of a specific class ofconsequentialist approaches (within the limits of the chosen require-ment5), which have, I would argue, some claim to our attention.

III. RESPONSIBILITY AND SITUATED EVALUATION

From which perspective should the evaluation be done? The demand

of situated evaluation requires that a person not ignore the particularposition from which she is making the choice. Consider, for example,the parent of a child for whom she is choosing a particular baby food.The requirement of situated evaluation does not, in any way, vindi-cate smugness about one's contingent level of ignorance, and doesnot deny the need for the person to find out, if reasonably possible,more about what others know or see (for example, that the baby foodwith which the parent is familiar might have been shown to be

harmful). Nor does it deny the relevance of broader sympathies (forexample, a parent may well ask whether it is right that her child

. should have the benefit of some baby food to which other children do

not have access). What is denied is the possibility of ignoring theperson's own responsibilities in her particular situation, in this casethat of being a parent of this child.

Even if the decision is to respond to some considerations comingfrom outside her situation (such as not using a baby food of which theneighbors are suspicious, or not giving one's child a baby food thatthe neighbors cannot afford to give to their children), that decisionwould have to be worked out from-and in this sense be compatiblewith-the responsibility she has toward her child for whom she ischoosing a baby food (the "other" considerations and their impor-tance would have to be evaluated by the parent situated in her own

position). She has to take responsibility for not only her choices ofsubstantive actions (going beyond evaluation), but also for her eval-uations on which the choices are to be based. She has to do the

evaluation, taking note-as Arjuna does-of her own position in the

11 "Rights and Agency," Philosophyand Public Affairs, XI, 1 (Winter 1982): 3-39, and"Well-being, Agency and Freedom: The Dewey Lectures 1984," this JOURNAL,LXXXII, 4 (April 1985): 169-21.

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486 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY CONSEQUENTIAL I~VALUATION AND PRACTICAL REASON 487

much a licenseto evaluate the outcomes as one likes, but a requirementthat one must take note of the contingent connections and circum-stances that characterize Aljuna's situation in this choice problem.Responsibility-and this is the important point here-demands situ-ated valuation by the agents. ...

It is also important to see that evaluator-relativity need not violateany requirement of "impersonality" that may be imposed on thediscipline of ethics. Indeed, impersonality must not be confused withwhat may be called impositionality-having to ignore the relevance ofa chooser's position or situation vis-a.-visthe choices and results. Incontrast with impositionality, position-relative impersonality requires,to put it in mildly mathematical terms, that parametric note be takenof the respective positionsof the different persons, but not of the exactpersonal identitiesinvolved.12

IV. INCOMPLETENESS AND MAXIMIZATION

I turn now to the second issue, the possibility of incompleteness ofranking in consequential evaluation. It is sometimes presumed that aconsequentialist approach must require that every possible state ofaffairs be comparable-and be clearly ranked-vis-a.-vis every other.This presumed requirement has sometimes been seen, with justice, asunlikely to be fulfilled, and it has been seen as a source of problemsfor consequentialist ethics. How can we always compare every alter-native with every other? Can we always find a best alternative?

Maximization does not, in fact, demand that all alternatives be com-parable, and does not even require that a best alternative be identifiable.It only requires that we do not choose an alternative that is worse thananother that can be chosen instead (as Scheffler (op. cit., p. 252) has

. rightly noted). There is some confusion on this technical point since incommon parlance, the term 'maximization' is used in many differentways. Sometimes the term is used to indicate that we must choose a best

alternative. This is, technically, better described as optimization(also aconcept much used in economics and decision theory). The basicdefinition of maximization in the foundational literature on set theoryand relational analysis is that of selecting an alternative to which there isnone better. Maximization and optimization coincide when the order-ing is complete,which it mayor may not be.13 Indeed, for optimization towork there should exista best alternative to be chosen (not necessarily a

uniquelybest alternative, but a best alternative nevertheless). Maximiza-tion does not require that.

For example, if there happens to be some incompleteness so thattwo options A and B cannot be ranked vis-a-viseach other, but eachof them is better than all the other alternatives, then maximizationwould require only that one of those two be chosen (both aremaximal). This is the way maximality is defined in the mathematicalliterature, both in pure set theory (for example, by Nicolas Bour-baki), and in axiomatic economic analysis (for example, by GerardDebreu),14 I have discussed elsewherelS this distinction and its far-reaching implications.

The distinction can be a matter of great practical importance. Takethe old story of Buridan's ass. The hapless donkey saw two haystacksthat it could not rank vis-a.-viseach other.16 Since donkeys are pre-sumed to be full-blooded optimizers rather than relaxed maximizers,Buridan's ass could not choose either haystack (since neither wasshown to be at least as good as the other), and it thus died ofstarvation. It starved since it could not rank the two haystacks (therewas no "best" or "optimal" choice), but of course each would havegenerated a better consequence than starvation. Even if the donkeyfailed to rank the two haystacks, it would have made sense-goodconsequentialist sense-for it to choose either rather than neither.Consequential evaluation needs maximization, but not optimization.

V. STATES, ACTIONS, MOTIVES, AND PROCESSES

I turn now to the third issue-what to include in the description ofstates of affairs, in using consequentialist logic. There is no generalreason for an a priori exclusion of any part of the state of affairs inevaluating that state of affairs. Some ethical theories (like utilitarianethics) insist, however, that nonutility features, such as actions, mustnot be considered to be of any value or disvalue on their own (rather,only for the utilities or disutilities they generate). But since there are "

12On this, see my "Positional Objectivity," Philosophy and Public Affairs, XXII, 2(Spring 1993): 126-45.

ISThe exact relations between optimization and maximization, and the condi-tions that make them coincide with each other, are identified in my "MaXimizationand the Act of Choice," Econometrica,LXV,4 (July 1997): 745-79.

14Bourbaki, Elements de Mathematique (Paris: Hermann, 1939) -Volume I, TheoryofSets (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1968); Debreu, Theory of Value (New York:Wiley, 1959; republished, New Haven: Yale, 1971). Isaac Levi-Hard Choices:DecisionMaking under Unresolved Conflict (New York: Cambridge, 1986)-has explored adifferent way of basing choices on incomplete rankings, which I shall not pursuehere.

15 CollectiveChoiceand Social Welfare,chapter 1; and "Maximization and the Act ofChoice."

It; There is a less interesting version of the story of Buridan's ass, according towhich it was indifferent between the two hay stacks and could not decide which tochoose. But if it were reaUy indifferent, then either haystack would, clearly, havebeen as good as the other, and even an optimizing donkey need not have faced animpasse.

488 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY CONSEQUENTIAL EVALUATION AND PRACTICAL REA.<;ON 489

good reasons to be concerned about some of these features, such as

actions, motives, and the like (for reasons which are close enough tothose which move deontologists, among others, to take note of them,

in their own special way), the utilitarian exclusion ends up being anarbitrary exclusion of a class of reasoned demands. I have discussed

this issue elsewhere,17 and shall not pursue it further here. In terms

of the example considered earlier, I should note that AIjuna's argu-ment against killing people in general, and killing friends and rela-tions in particular, has clear implications for his choice of action.

Indeed, the idea of responsibility for the consequences of one'sactions can hardly be compatible with ignoring some of the conse-quences one takes seriously-and has reason to take seriously. Thisissue relates closely to the tension on which Scheffler concentrates in

arguing that what "makes so much trouble for views that incorporateagent-centred restrictions, is what we may call maximizing rationality"(oj). cit., p. 252). Agent-centered concerns need not, of course, bepresented in the form of constraints or "restrictions" (as they are insome deontological theories), but agent-specific sensitivity can beincorporated within the maximizing framework of consequential rea-soning by taking evaluative note of the actions of agents, which are

part of the state of affairs. The demands of responsibility certainly callfor agent-sensitive evaluation. Arjuna cannot treat his own killing ofpeople (and even other deaths that would occur if he were to allow

the war to go on, with his support) in the same way that he can treatdeaths that result from other causes or other agencies. There need

not really be any tension between maximizing rationality and agent-sensitive reasoning (central for consequential responsibility as well as

. for deontology). unless parts of the states of affairs, particularlyactions, were to be arbitrarily excluded from the domain of situatedconsequential evaluation.

Sometimes the demand for excluding particular components ofthe state of affairs comes from the claim that they are somehow notreally part of the state of affairs at all. For example, it has beenclaimed that an action performed is not a part of a state. The fact that

to do something is to make something happen is an elementaryenough point, and yet not only has this been denied in many anti-

consequentialist arguments, that denial has ended up having pivotalimportance in the strategy of such arguments. In his earlier book, The

Rejectionof Consequentialism,Scheffler18 not only develops this line ofreasoning, but also quotes a "personal communication" from ThomasScanlon allegedly making this point. Scanlon is quoted as saying: "thedistinctive nioral badness of killings compared with other deathsexists, if at all, only in an agent-centered morality focusing on whatyou do. Once we move to the moral appraisal of what happens, thedifferential treatment of killings and otherwise equally undesirabledeaths becomes much less plausible" (ibid., p. 109). A state of affairscertainly does consist of what has happened, but if an action x hasbeen performed by person i, then it certainly has happened that i hasdone x. It would require an odd surgery to "remove" this occurrencefrom the description of the state of affairs, and that would be anepistemically impoverishing and morally debilitating exclusion.

If Ar:juna kills someone, it would be peculiar to deny that such akilling has occurred. And in doing a moral evaluation of what hashappened, Arjuna can hardly overlook the fact that this killing hashappened, and that he himself has played the active part in this event.It is a part of history, and it is an event that Arjuna in particular musttake seriously. The discipline of consequential evaluation of states ofaffairs does not offer a special exemption to anyone to overlook whatshe has done on the ground that we must be concerned only withwhat has happened,not what has been done.

There are reasons to pause to consider this issue further, sinceScanlon has developed this argument more fully in his later work.One crucial issue, among others, is Scanlon's argument that "thenegative intrinsic value attached to morally undesirable actions isimpartial-that is to say that an action that has this disvalue issomething that everyone has reason to prevent" (op. cit., p. 83). Thelatter part of the claim (not the former) need not be denied evenwithin broad consequentialism (of the kind I have been exploring),and it can indeed be argued that everyone has a reason to prevent,say, a murder from occurring. The real issue is not that, but whethereveryone has the same reason, with the same force-the murderer nomore than anyone else-to avert that murder. The idea that the stateof affairs must be evaluatively viewed in the same way by everyonesharing the same ethics, despite their different roles (in, say, havingmurdered someone or not) is arbitrary as well as implausible.

Scanlon points out that "if we are to make sense of the idea of aI deontological prohibition against killing by assigning intrinsic dis-

value to acts of killing, this disvalue must not be impartial but what is17"Utilitarianism and WeJfarism." "Rights and Agency," "Well-being. Agency and

Freedom: The Dewey Lectures 1984," and On Ethics and Economics (Malden, MA:Blackwell, 1987). ]8 New York: Oxford, 1982.

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490 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY CONSEQUENTIAL EVALUATION AND PRACTICAL REASON 491

sometimes called agent-relative disvalue" (ibid.). With this proposi-tion I am basically in agreement, except that I would go beyond hisclaim and argue that this disvalue must be agent relative not just inthe case of deontological prohibitions, but also in other-less ex-treme-cases of giving shape to deontological concerns with actionsand agencies. Indeed, the scope of agent-relative judgments need notbe confined only to "prohibitions," which is a specially limiting way inwhich some deontological systems accommodate agent-relative val-

ues. In broad deontology as well as in broad consequentialism, theremay be agent-relative variations that do not take the form of a

prohibition. For example, in Bernard Williams's illuminating analysisof the now-famous case as to whether it would be right for Jim tofollow the utilitarian logic to kill one captive if it would save the livesof the other nineteen, Williams's main concern is with identifyingand explaining the important considerations that utilitarianismleaves out. His conclusion is not so much that the utilitarian would

come to the wrong conclusion in this case, but, as Williams puts it, "if(as 1 suppose) the utilitarian is probably right in this case, that is notto be found out just by asking the utilitarian's questions."I9 Deonto-logical prohibition is a very special case of agent-relativejudgments.

In a broad consequential system, the agent-relative variation ofvaluation may distinguish the special badness of killing vis-a.-vis allow-ing a death to occur, and it is only if the extra disvalue of killing isinfinitely negative for the murderer, then (and only then) the agent-relative consequential system would impose a total prohibition onkilling. The distinction is of importance in this analysis, and it hassome relevance even to Scanlon's further argument that "agent~relative reason" cannot "flow from the disvalue of an action, under-

stood as an event" (oj). cit., p. 83), a proposition that neatly states ourmain point of disagreement. I have already discussed why responsi-bility for the consequences of one's choice cannot be suspended toprovide a special exemption to the chooser for the event that takesthe form of a murder that he commits. But among our differences isthe emphasis that Scanlon seems to put on the principle of "deon-tological prohibitions."

Scanlon rightly points out that someone "who accepts this principle[of deontological prohibitions] therefore does not need to appeal tothe 'negative intrinsic value' of killing in order to explain why she

does not do what is necessary to save the greater number" (op. cit., p.84). This is indeed so, but it applies only to the extreme case of totalprohibition (and does not come to terms with, for example, Wil-liams's rich analysis of Jim's dilemma, nor with his balanced overallconclusion). This is adequate enough if one must never kill-noteven to prevent a genocide of a million people. To allow other-lessextreme-possibilities, deontological theory would have to take abroader form than constraint-based deontology permits. And thenthe approach through the special badness (what is unprepossessinglydescribed as "negative intrinsic value") of killing is not such a patentlyredundant idea.

I shall not go further into this contrast here.2o But I must also pointout that there are other parts of the state of affairs (other than theactions in general and the agent's own actions in particular) whichare sometimes left out of the accounting of the state of affairs inmaking the claim that they lie beyond the reach of consequentialevaluation. This is often claimed about the motivation of a person inundertaking an action, in which standard utilitarian ethics has nodirect interest. It too can be important, however, in broader conse-quential systems.

Indeed, motivation can be seen to be part and parcel of what ishappening and may well be taken into account when a state of affairsisjudged. Consider, for example, a person who says:"You say I shouldbe satisfied with the fact that he has apologized; I agree that he hasused words of apology, but what has not actually happened is hisreally feeling sorry and apologizing genuinely; he has just apologizedto escape chastisement, and this is not good enough." The distinctionbeing made (about what has "actually happened") concerns themotivation underlying an action.

A state of affairs is informationally rich. There is no particularreason to insist on an impoverished account of a state of affairs inevaluating it. Also, the reach of consequential reasoning can incor-porate processesof choice, and not merely the narrowly defined ulti-mate outcomes. In the context of decision theory and rationalchoice, I have argued for the importance of paying particular atten-tion to "comprehensive outcomes" (including actions undertaken,processes involved, and the like along with the final outcomes), in-stead of confining attention to only the "culmination outcome" (what

19 "A Critique of Utilitarianism," p. 117. Williams's critique is primarily againstutilitarianism, but he relates this to his rejection of consequentialism in general,without characterizing his preferred alternative in the form of de ontological pro-hibitions.

20See also my "Rights and Agency," "Evaluator Relativity and ConsequentialEvaluation," "Well-being, Agency and Freedom: The Dewey Lectures 1984," and OnEthics and Economics.

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21 The nalUre and the importance of the distinction between "culmination out-comes" and "comprehensive outcomes" are more fully analyzed in my "Maximiza-tion and the Act of Choice."

22Even if it were the case that the presidential candidate actually wants-nomatter what he says-to win the election by fair means or foul, the argumentpresented by him is for the excellence of "winning fairly." The point is not aboutthe actual preference of the person (even less about the likelihood of such apreference), but only about a valuational judgment on the importance of a com-prehensive outcome of this kind.

A to avoid being assaulted, and (2) the obligation of others not toassault A. (It may also include a general obligation of others to try toprevent a third person from assaulting A, but that involves somecomplication, which I shall address later.) A comprehensive outcomecan be judged to have been worsened on eachof these-distinct butinterrelated-grounds if, say, person B were to assault A: this wouldbe a nonfulfillment of A's right and a nonperformance of B's duty.The right and the obligation are not independent events, but theymay not be invariably locked to each other (for example, B'sseriousattempt at assaulting A may fail, and yet the badness of B's havingtried to assault would still be a factor to consider in assessing thecomprehensive outcome). The realization (or not) of substantive '.freedoms as well as taking adequate account (or not) of obligationscan bothfigure in ethical accounting within this broad consequentialframework.

It may be worth scrutinizing how exactly does tllis incorporation of thefulfillment of rights and of correlated duties within a consequentialframework differ, on the one hand, from rights-independentconsequentialevaluation,for example, in utilitarianism, and, on the other, from rights-inclusivenonconsequentialprocedures,for example, in constraint-based lib-ertarianism.23 Utilitarians do not include the realization offreedoms, orthe fulfillment of rights or duties, among the valued objects at all, and sothere is a fundamental gap here. Of course, rights or duties may beinstrumentally valued by utilitarians for what they can do to promoteutilities, but their fulfillment or violation does not, by itself, make thestates better or worse in utilitarian accounting.

Turning now to libertarianism, it does of course pay much directattention to rights and duties, but only as constraints that restrict whatothers are permitted to do. No one should assault A, and if B doescarry out an as~ault on A, then he has violated a constraint that heshould have obeyed. But in pure libertarian theory, it is not claimedthat the state of affairs has turned worse as a result of that assault. Thebadness of the assault is not the issue in that approach, only itswrongness is.24

So neither the utilitarian nor the libertarian would argue-or insist(as a rights-inclusive consequentialist would)-that the assault was, initself, a bad thing to happen. In judging the state of affairs, utilitar-ianism would turn only to utilities.25 The libertarian is not concerned

happens at the very end). 21 The distinction can be very central tocertain problems in economics, politics, sociology, and in the generaltheory of rational decisions and games. As it happens, the distinctionis also crucial in assessing the reach of consequential reasoning. If,for example, a presidential candidate were to argue that what is reallyimportant is not just to win the forthcoming election, but "to win theelection fairly," then the outcome recommended is a comprehensiveoutcome,which includes a process consideration (not just the culmi-nation outcome of winning the election-no matter how). 22 Theappraisal of comprehensive outcomes can be an integral part of theassessment of states of affairs, and tlms a crucial building block inconsequential evaluation.

VI. RIGHTSAND OBLIGATIONS

The type of consequentialist evaluation that is being explored herecan adequately withstand various standard critiques of consequential-ism which can be found in the literature. I shall come presently tothat defensive issue. But before that, I want to look at a more positiveaspect of the outlined consequentialist approach, in particular itsextensive reach. I shaH illustrate tllis reach by showing how theproposed consequential framework may be able to accommodate theconcept of moral (rather than legal) rights in general, and "humanrights" in particular (a concept that is frequently invoked in practicaldiscussions in the contemporary world).

There is, of course, no necessity to invoke the idea of rights in anyform in making use of the broad consequential approach I have beenexploring here, but it is also the case (as it were, a "further fact") thatrights, including human rights, can be placed within this framework.

. One way of thinking about this issue is to separate out two aspects ofa standard concept of rights: (1) it aims at the freedom of the right-holder to do certain things or achieve some conditions, and (2) itdemands some correlate obligationson the part of others (which cantake the form of noninterference orof positive assistance) to help inthe realization of this freedom by the right-holder. For example,person A's right not to be assaulted concerns both (1) the freedom of

23See Nozick.24On this, see Nozick, chapter 7.25The assault, not seen as in itself bad, gets utilitarian attention only if-and only

to the extent that-utilities are reduced overall as a result of the assault (in fact, of

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494 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY CONSEQUENTIAL EVALUATION AND PRACTICAL REASON495

course, the overall utility picture can, in many circumstances, move in precisely theopposite direction). On this, see my "Rights and Agency."

26On this, see my "Rights and Agency."27This requirement and its extensive practical implications are discussed in my

DevelojJment as Ji'reedom (New York: Knopf; and New York: Oxford, 1999).

ing us neither who must particularly take the initiative, nor how far heshould go in doing this general duty), but this loosely formulatedobligation-Immanuel Kanf's would call it an "imperfect obliga-tion"-to help Iriay nevertheless be seriously considered by (and beinfluential with) responsible people. Indeed, neglect or disregard ofsuch general obligations may be plausibly seen as a bad thing tohappen, and can be taken into account in evaluating states of affairs.For example, if a person were severely assaulted in full view of othersand her cries for help were completely ignored, it is not unreasonable(in discussing what was so bad about that event) to argue that threebad things happened: (1) the victim's freedom was violated, and sowas her right not to be assaulted; (2) the assaulter transgressed theimmunity that others should have from intrusion (in this case, aviolent intrusion) and violated his duty not to assault others; and (3)the others who did nothing to help the victim also transgressed theirgeneral-and imperfect-obligation to help others (which theycould reasonably be expected to provide). They are interrelatedfailings, but distinct from each other.

It is important to see that in linking human rights to both perfectand imperfect obligations, there is no suggestion that the right-dutycorrespondence be denied. Indeed, the binary relation betweenrights and obligations can be quite important, and it is precisely thisbinary relation which separates out human rights from the generalvaluing' of freedom (without a correlated obligation of others to helpbring about a greater realization of human freedom). The questionthat remains is whether it is adequate for this binary relation to allowimjJerfectobligations to correspond to human rights, without demand-ing an exact specification of who will have to do what, as in the caseof legal rights and specified perfect obligations.

This question is indeed the basic source of some of the skepticismthat greets assertions of human rights without exact identification ofparticular perfect obligations that would lead to the realization ofthese rights. In the absence of such perfect obligations, demands for,human rights are often seen just as loose talk (perhaps wonderfulloose talk, but loose talk nevertheless). One question that motivatessome of this skepticism is: How can we be sure that rights are, in fact,realizable unless they are matched by full specification of who will dowhat? Indeed,' some do not see any sense in a right unless it isbalanced by what Kant called a "perfect obligation"-a specific dutyof a particular agent for the actual realization of that right. Onora

(at least in this exercise) with judging the state of affairs at all. Incontrast with both these approaches, consequential evaluation thattakes note of freedoms, rights, and obligations-and their violation-would argue that bad things have happened precisely because some-one's freedom has been breached, and some rights and duties havebeen violated.26

VII, HUMAN RIGHTS AND IMPERFECT OBLIGATIONS

I turn now to human rights in particular. These are rights that individ-uals are supposed to have not by virtue of their citizenship of anyparticular country, but because of ~eir status as human beings. Thesemayor may not be legislated rights, but in so far as they are valued, thatvaluation can include the importance that is attached to the relevantpersons' freedoms and also the responsibility that others have-irrespec-tive of citizenship, nationality, and other denominations-to help thisperson to attain these freedoms. If others can help, then there is aresponsibility that goes with it. Even if it is not specified who will have todo what to help the victimized person, there is a general need for aresponsible consequence-evaluating agent to consider her general dutyto help others (when reasonably feasible).27

Some of these obligations tend to be more fully specified thanothers. For example, the insistence that the state must not arbitrarilyarrest a person (if that is seen as a human right, no matter whetherthe laws of the land prohibit arbitrary arrest or not) is more exactlycharacterized than, say, the demand that a person has a right to helpin escaping starvation (it demands, generally though imprecisely, thatall those who are in a position to help should try to consider what theycan do to prevent this eventuality from occurring). Demands ofhuman rights can take either form, with or without pinpointing spe-

. cific duties that the obligation bearers are asked to accept.In i~lct, even the fulfillment or violation of precisely specified

obligations can go with imperfect obligations of others to help in ageneral way. Since gross violations of serious obligations can be seenas making the states of affairs worse, even others not directly involvedin the violation of a perfectly specified obligation (for example,person A's being assaulted by person B) may have a general duty tohelp (in this case, to try to prevent B's assault on A). This duty,through a consequential link, may be rather inexactly specified (tell-

28 Critique ofPractical&ason, LW. Beck, trans. (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956).

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496 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHYCONSEQUENTIAL EVALUATION AND PRACTICAL REASON 497

O'Neill has argued powerfully in this direction in her book, TowardsJustice and Virtue29:

Unfortunately much writing and rhetoric on rights heedlessly proclaimsuniversal rights to goods and services, and in particular "welfare rights,"as well as to other social, economic and cultural rights that are promi-nent in international Charters and Declarations, without showing whatconnects each presumed right-holder to some specific obligation-bearer(s) , which leaves the content of these supposed rights whollyobscure. This obscurity has been a scene and source of vast political andtheoretical wrangling. Some advocates of universal economic, social andcultural rights go no further than to emphasize that they can be institu-tionalized, which is true. But the point of difference is that they must beinstitutionalized: if they are not there is no right (ibid., pp. 131-32).

O'Neill goes on to identify the constructive role of "virtue," instead of

rights, since rights, in this view, make no sense when unaccompaniedby specified perfect obligations. For example, so long as the putativeright to food is not matched up with some particular person's oragent's specific obligation, the hungry do not really, in this reckon-ing, have a right to food at all. On the other hand, it would still bevirtuous to feed the hungry.

This line of reasoning has considerable persuasive power, and

O'Neill has done much to explore and illuminate the territory ofvirtue.3o We can, however, ask: Why insist on the absolute necessity ofco-specified perfect obligation for a putative right to qualify as a realright? Certainly, a perfect obligation would help a great deal towardthe realization of rights, but why cannot there be unrealized rights,even rights that are hard to realize? We do not, in any obvious sense,contradict ourselves by saying: "These people had all these rights, butalas they were not realized." Something else has to be invoked to

jump from pessimism about the fulfillment of rights, all the way to thedenial of the rights themselves.

This distinction may appear to be partly a matter of language, and itmight be thought that O'Neill's rejection could be based on how tl1e

term 'rights' functions in common discourse. Perhaps O'Neill is point-

29New York: Cambridge, 1996.

30Indeed, our understanding of the role of virtue is very significantly enriched byO'Neill's constructive analysis ofit~ extensive reach presented in Towardsjustice andViTtue,but also by the far-reaching investigation in her earlier book-Faces ofHunger:An Essay on PoveTty,Justice and Development (London: Allen and Unwin, 1986)-ofthe role of sympathetic ethics and humane politics, in the remedying of hunger inthe contemporary world. It is also important to note that O'Neill does not oppose"welfare right~," but wants them to be institutionalized (otherwise, "there is noright").

ing to language use and its discipline? But in fact the term 'rights' is usedmuch. more widely than O'Neill demands. Indeed, it is a significant partof her claim that the term 'rights' is often used quite wrongly; she is notrelying on language usage-rather going against it. The language ofrights, in public as well as private disQUssion,often proceeds without anyclear identification of perfect obligations. Rather, the claim to whichO'Neill gives expression must be based on the presumption that usingrights in this way-what is seen by her as a wrong way-is full of internalproblems which can be remedied only by more exacting specification ofrights with correlated obligations. O'Neill's point, then, is not usage butthe cogency of usage.

I would, however, resist the claim that any use of rights except witl1co-linked perfect obligations must lack cogency. Indeed, it can beclaimed that the problem that O'Neill perceives arises partly from herimplicit attempt to see the use of rights in political or moral discoursethrough a close analogy with rights in a legal system, witl1its demand forspecification of correlated duties. In contrast, in normative discussion~rights are often championed as entitlements or powers or immunitje~that it would be good for people to have. Human rights are seen as righ~shared by all-irrespective of citizenship-and the benefits of whic!:j.everyone should have. The claims are addressed generally-in Kant'!)language "imperfectly"-to anyone who can help. Even though n<)'part~cular person or agency has been charged with bringing about th~fulfillment of the rights involved, they can still be very influential. Evenif it is not feasible that everyone can have the fulfillment of their rightsin this sense (if, for example, it is not yet possible to eliminate under-nourishment altogether), credit can still be taken for the extentto whichthese alleged rights are fulfilled. The recognition of such claims as rightsmay not only be an ethically important statement, it can also help tofocus attention on these matters, making tl1eir fulfillment that muchmore likely-or quicker.31

This is indeed the form in which many major champions of rights-based thinking have tried to use the idea of rights. The plausibilityand advantage of thinking in terms of rights was brought out earlyenough by Tom Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft, who were contem-pOl-aries (indeed, Paine's Rights of Man and Wollstonecraft's TheVindication of the Rights of Women were published in the same year,

31 These issues are discussed in my Droelojnnent as Freedom,chapter 10, which alsocritically examines some specific argumellt~ against the idea of human right~(related respectively to their "legitimacy," "coherence," and "cultural basis").

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1792).32 To dismiss this powerful literature by claiming that they weremaking some kind of an elementary mistake would seem to be basedon the odd assumption that they were talking about something otherthan what they were talking about. Or, alternatively, that they shouldbe tf;llkingabout something other than what they wanted to discuss.

In fact, it is not in general cogent even to presume that, if an inexactlyspecified human right is important, then it must be excellent to try tolegislate it into a precisely specified right and to "institutionalize" it as anexact right. For example, a wife's "human right" to be consulted infamily decisions even in a traditionalist society (where these decisions aretypically ta.ken~y the husband on his own) may be important to empha-size and even to fight for. And yet a great defender of this human right(and its far-reaching ethical and political implications) might agree thatit is not sensible to make this human right into a legal right (perhapswith tlle husband's being arrested and locked up if he were to fail toconsult his wife). The importance of human rights need not lie only intheir being putative proposals for legislation and institutionalization.Human rights can have their own domain of influence and importancewithout being parasitic on-or even being wisely reinforced by-subse-quent legislation.

The issue of cogency cannot be decided by obliterating the differ-ence between two dissimilar types of usage of the idea of rights, andby insisting that cogency in one usage must mirror cogency in theother. If the fulfillment of rights is a good thing to happen-themore the better-as it would be seen in a consequential perspective,the condition of full feasibility cannot be a condition of coherence.An analogy with utilitarianism may be helpful. Utilitarian reasoning~dmits the possibility and exceJ1ence of everyone enjoying what FrankRamsey33 called "bliss." This is among the alternatives that are con-sidered-indeed better than any other-but it is not, of course,claimed that the utilitarian exercise would lack cogency if bliss for allis not realized, nor be realizable (indeed quite the contrary). Indeed,Ramsey did not presume that "bliss" would be realizable, but this didnot reduce the cogency of his exercise of minimizing the aggregateshortfall from bliss. Similarly, rights-inclusive objectives in a system ofconsequential evaluation can accommodate certain rights the fulfill-ment of which would be exceJ1ent but not guaranteed, and we canstill try to minimize the shortfall.

32Paine (London: Symonds, 1792); and Wollstonecraft (London: johnson,1792).

33Foundations of Mathemcltit:sand OtherLogiwl Essays (London: Kegan Paul, 1931).

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VIII. CONSEQUENTIAL EVALUATION AND INTERDEPENDENCE

One of the positive merits of consequential evaluation is the disci-pline that it imposes and the decisional issues it makes each agentface. If rights are embedded in a system of consequential evaluation,we are immediately led to questions about the badness of the viola-tion of rights, or the goodness of their fulfiJ1ment, and it has impli-cations on good choices and good actions. These consequentialimplications suggest how different rights may be assessed vis-ii-viseach other, and how the priorities between them may be systemati-cally appraised within a coherent consequentialist framework. Thosewho take rights as side constraints tend to argue against any suchbalancing, and seem to be dead set against endorsing the infractionof any right-no matter how minor-for the sake of preventing amore important violation of another-more crucial-right.34

Indeed, we often have to face issues that explicitly or implicitlyinvolve the balanCing of different rights, or the balancing of rightsagainst other good things. Suppose you can prevent a murder fromtaking place or a rape from occurring by appearing on the scene. Butto do that you need to use a motor car and you do not have one.Someone you know does have a car just there and you can find yourway into it, but you know that he would be most unwilling to let youuse his car for this purpose. Do you have a reason to violate his rightover his own car to prevent the violation of life and liberty whichwould occur if the murder or rape were to take place (if you wouldfail to show up)?

It is possible that not everyone will agree as to what should be done,but it is not absurd to think that you have a reasonable case forviolating the minor right of the car owner to prevent a bigger viola-tion of more important rights of the person who is threatened withrape or murder.35 But this will be directly against obeying the sideconstraint of not violating anyone's rights, including tl1e car owner's,and in that system of constraint-based deontology, you must not bemoved by the relative gravity of different violations of rights, or byother consequences. On the other hand, with a consequential ap-proach, such comparisons can be part and parcel of taking respon-

M Nozick (op. t:it.) argues against such trade-offsbetween rights, which he sees as"utilitarianism of rights." Utilitarianism of rights would indeed be contradictory,but consequentialism of rights need not be. Notice that there are three distinctthough interrelated departures from the libertarian framework: (1) violation ofrights are included among the consequences; (2) there can be "trade-offs" betweenrights; and (3) there can be "trade-offs" between the goodness of rights fulfillmentand other good consequences.

35I have discussed this issue in "Rights and Agency."

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500 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY CONSEQUENTIAL EVALUATION AND PRACTICAL REASON 501

sibility for the consequences of one's actions. Indeed, in thatapproach, refusing to consider the relative importance of the differ-ent violations of rights can well count as a significant abdication ofresponsibility.

The need to examine the relative importanc;e of different conse-quences (including weD-beings, freedoms, rights, and so on) that maycompete with each other in evaluative assessment does arise in manydifferent contexts. We live in an interdependent world in which therealization of our respective freedoms interconnects in a variety ofways, and we cannot treat them each as an isolated island. Thediscipline of consequential evaluation forces us to take responsibilityfor our choices, since our actions influence other people's freedomsand lives as well as our own. The reach of our responsibility includesasking certain questions, such as those concerning the relative im-portance of different rights or freedoms the realization of which mayimpinge on each other.

But situations of interdependence have also been used to presentan important class of arguments that resist consequential reasoning,and indeed the merits of deontological reasoning is often illustratedby invoking interdependences of a kind in which-it has been ar-gued-consequential evaluation would lead to just the wrong deci-sion. Commenting on an earlier paper of mine, "Rights and Agency,"Philippa Foot36 notes that embedding the fulfillment or violation ofrights within a consequential structure "would help to solve someproblems," but leave others untouched:

...this "goal rights" system fails to deal with certain other examples ofactions that most of us would want to call wrong. Suppose, for instance,that some evil person threatens to kill or torture a number of victimsunless we kill or torture one, and suppose that we have every reason tobelieve that he will do as he says. Then in terms of their total outcomes(again consisting of the states of affairs made up an action and itsconsequences) we have the choice between more killings and torturingsand less, and a consequentialist will have to say that we are justified inkilling or torturing the one person, and indeed weare morally obligedto do it, alwayssupposing that no indirect consequences have tipped thebalance of good and evil. There will in fact be nothing that it will not beright to do to a perfectly innocent individual if that is the only way ofpreventing another agent from doing more things of the same kind(ibid., p. 226).

This kind of example has also been considered by Williams, Scheffler,Thomas Nagel, Derek Parfit,37 among others, to present a similarrejection of consequentialism. ,

Does this argument against the plausibility of consequential evalu-ation work? It would indeed work well against a combinedsystem thatjoins consequentialism with further requirements of insensitivity, inparticular the wholly additional-and (I have argued) quite unjusti-fied-demand that evaluation of consequences be insensitive to thenature' of the act and the position of the agent (this further restric-tion is imposed, as was discussed earlier, by "welfarism" in the utili-tarian system). But it offers nothing against consequential evaluationwith situated valuations, for reasons that were also discussed earlier.Whe.il I am evaluating a choice for me, with one option being mykilling an innocent person, I can hardly see it in the same way asanother killing, that may be occurring somewhere else without mybeing involved in it. No matter what we ultimately decide in verycomplex cases in which my killing one person may save many lives,perhaps even a million lives (there are indeed arguments on bothsides), the two happenings, namely, (1) my killing someone and (2)a death unrelated to me occurring, are most emphatically not thesame. They are descriptively quite different, and that differenceshould be of considerable normative significance when I come toevaluate the consequences of my choices. Why must we assume thatthey should be "taken to be the same," when they clearly are not?Indeed, it is precisely the badness of killing innocent people thatadded force to Arjuna's consequential argument against Krishna'sdefense of the deontologicalobligationto fight for a just cause.

IX. A CONCLUDING REMARK

The starting point of this article is the importance of taking respon-sibility for one's choices and their consequences. This provides themotivation behind the discipline of consequential evaluation as out-lined here. In that light, I have scrutinized the relevance and reach ofconsequential evaluation without amalgamating it with extraneousdemands such as welfarism (imposed by utilitarianism), which insiststhat all consequences other than utility consequences be ultimatelyignored. The responsibility of choice applies to the choice of evalu-ative perspective as well as that of actions and conduct. I have tried toanalyze both (1) the general demands of consequential evaluation,

36"Utilitarianism and the Virtues," Mind, XCIV,374 (1985): 196-209; reprinted inScheffler, Con.lequentiali.lmand Itj' Critics.

37Williams, "A Critique of Utilitarianism," in Smart and Williams; Nagel, "TheLimits of Objectivity," in S, McMurrin, ed., Tanner Lectures on Human Values,VolumeI (New York: Cambridge, 1980); Scheffler, 11IeRejection of Consequ,entialism;Parfit,op. cit.

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502 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

and (2) more specifically, features of a particular class of consequen-tial evaluations that are distinctly nonutilitarian,

Some of the allegedlimitations of consequential reasoning can beseen to be generated not by the discipline of consequential evalua-tion itself, but by additional assumptions-entirely separate and byno means necessary-with which a consequential approach is fre-quently combined. Three supplementary assumptions, extraneous tothe general approach of consequential evaluation, are especiallylimiting: (1) the insistence on a complete ordering of all states ofaffairs (thereby confounding maximization with ojJtimization);(2) theremoval of actions, motives, processes, and other features of states ofaffairs from artificially denuded concepts of states of affairs (therebyignoring the breadth of comprehensiveoutcomes in favor of the nar-rowness of culmination outcomes); and (3) disregarding the position-ality of the agen ts vis-a.-visthe actions and the resulting states of affairs(thereby replacing situated valuations by selectively blind assessment).There is, in fact, no necessity to combine consequential evaluationwith these supplementary assumptions, and then to damn consequen-tial evaluation for the company it is thus forced to keep.

Within a broad consequential framework, ethical or political rightscan be seen to be less narrowly specified than the formalities of legalrights. The alleged need to specify "perfect obligations" (specifyingexactly who will do what) to correspond to rights, which are some-times taken to be essential for making any sense of rights, are overlyrestrictive. In contrast, looser forms of obligations (sometimes called"imperfect obligations"), which point to the need for others to payserious attention to their responsibilities in preventing harm and theviolation of freedoms and rights, can have an extensive role inmaking us understand such concepts as "human rights" and "basiccivil rights." They need not be dismissed as just loose talk.

As it happens, communication and debating on rights and duties arefull of serious difficulties and natural hurdles, because of substantivedifferences in our values and priorities. We need not add to these realproblems a spurious one arising from a refusal to see the wayrights andduties may be cogently understood in consequence-oriented evaluation,The political reasoning underlying the idea of human rights callsneitllerfor misconceived dismissal, nor for good-humored tolerance of well-meaning but allegedly confused activists,but for a better understandingof the conceptual basis of these claims. Consequential evaluation hassomething to offer here, as it has in many other fields as well.

AMARTYA SEN

Trinity College, Cambridge

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