One
may define morality as the parameters that people use for
permissible social interaction. Some people have constructed moral
theories that society could choose to use. In that sense
philosophical moral theories are something like political theories
for building an ideal state.
Utilitarianism
was constructed by British empirical philosophers like Jeremy Bentham
and John Stuart Mill. Consequentialism was a latter offshoot of
utilitarianism. Each of those two moral theories have fundamental
flaws. The obvious problem is that people disagree about what the
good is.
An
example of utilitarian and consequentialism applied in Nazi Germany.
Adolph Hitler and Eichman believed that the greatest good was in
eliminating Jews, Homosexuals, gypsies and whoever in order to
construct an idea state with perfect morality. The greatest good for
the greatest number of Germans was regarded as having a pure Aryan
nation.
The
problem is obvious. When one uses a moral system and the consequences
of acts to decide if a choice was good or bad morally speaking, the
system becomes sort of meaningless. Consider a logical formula in the
abstract that has undefined variables that remain undefined. Yet when
the variables or literals are given concrete expressions (such as
paragraphs about an act or even) the philosopher in evaluating the
morality of the acts decides the concrete data can be used to
evaluate the moral system itself. The moral system is forever
self-defining. It is a tautology itself.
One
could of course form a Venn Diagram kind of logical test with various
acts pre-determined to be good or bad and then placed in the right
circles, then determine if an act as a consequence has a majority of
those good or bad marks, yet of course that is just a kind of
utilitarianism with the marks arbitrarily defined by the ruler of
that logical universe.
One
solid objection to consequentialism is that it arms political
lunatics to commit any number or sort of crime with the reasoning
that the consequence sought is the necessary justification. In other
words it is the familiar end justifies the means way of thing.
