Abstract

According to maximizing consequentialism, rightness is an all-or-nothing property, rather than one that admits of degrees. This demands much of agents, and leaves no conceptual room for supererogation. While a retreat to satisficing consequentialism mitigates this problem, any choice of a threshold for rightness, even maximization, is arbitrary, and the difference between right and wrong has no more significance than other differences in net goodness. Consequentialist theories, such as utilitarianism, are thus best conceived, in scalar fashion, as, at the fundamental level, theories of the good, that judge actions to be better or worse than possible alternatives, and provide reasons for actions corresponding in strength to differences in net goodness. Such theories are no less capable of action-guidance than theories that incorporate rightness and wrongness at the fundamental level.