The Ethical Consequentializing Argument

Abstract

Abstract This chapter takes up the most ambitious of the ethical arguments for consequentialism, the ethical consequentializing argument. This ethical form of the consequentializing argument purports to provide a conversion of any plausible ethical theory into a substantive form of act-consequentialism that is deontically equivalent, yielding the same deontic verdicts as the target theory. The chapter demonstrates, however, that even standard alternatives, in particular Aristotelian virtue ethics and Kantian ethics, cannot be consequentialized. The consequentializing strategy, even when applied to these standard alternatives, fails on its own terms to produce consequentialized counterparts: it can either produce a substantive version of consequentialism or secure deontic equivalence with the target theory—but not both. Faithfully deploying the strategy even upon our standard alternatives to consequentialism demonstrates not only that such theories cannot be put in consequentialized form, but that they are not forms of consequentialism.