Here is a simple reductive account of right and wrong that now seems to me to be obviously correct:
- An action is right if and only if it is non-instrumentally wholly good; it is wrong if and only if it is non-instrumentally at least partly bad.
Think, after all, how easily we move between saying that someone acted badly and that someone acted wrongly.
If (1) is a correct reduction, then we can reduce facts about right and wrong to facts about the value of particular kinds of things, namely actions.
By the way, if we accept (1), then consequentialism is equivalent to the following thesis:
- An action is non-instrumentally good if and only if it is on balance (instrumentally and non-instrumentally) best.
But it is quite strange to think that there be an entity that is non-instrumentally good if and only if it is on balance best.
But surely there's a distinction between intrinsically right actions and instrumentally right actions. Sometimes the rightness or wrongness of the action depends on the circumstances and predictable results.
ReplyDeleteSure: but a good action has to be in harmony with the circumstances.
ReplyDelete