If the End Doesn’t Justify the Means, What Does?

Historically, moral philosophers have tended to fall into one of three camps. There are the consequentialists, who define good and evil actions in terms of the benefits and harms they bring about. There are the deontologists, who call an action good or evil depending on whether it conforms to a particular moral rule or duty. And there are virtue ethicists, for whom actions are good or evil insofar as they are the fruit of some virtue or vice. While ancient philosophers may have gone all in for one or the other of these schools, contemporary thinkers acknowledge that any convincing moral system will make room for rules, virtues, and consequences. The debate these days isn’t over whether rules or virtues or consequences matter, but which is fundamental, and which are incidental. In this essay, I’m going to argue that consequences are more fundamental than rules or virtues, but perhaps not for the reasons you might think. As I hope to show, consequences are fundamental because systems of rules and virtuous character traits are themselves the consequences of an evolutionary process. Whatever weight rules and virtues possess, they possess thanks to their capacity for bringing about the consequences favored by that evolutionary process. <a href="https://medium.com/illumination/if-the-end-doesnt-justify-the-means-what-does-6de48d8915f1">Learn More</a>