I’m confused. Consequentialists do not have access to the actual outcomes when they are making their decisions, so using that as a guideline for making moral decisions is completely unhelpful.
It also seems that your statement that good intentions don’t justify the means is false. Consider this counterexample:
I have 2 choices A and B. Option A produces 2 utilons with 50% probability and −1 utilon the rest of the time. Choice B is just 0 utilons with 100% probability.
My expected utility for option A is +0.5 utilons which is greater than the 0 utilons for option B so I choose option A.
Let’s say I happen to get the −1 utilon in the coin flip.
At this point, it seems the following three things are true:
I had good intentions
I had a bad actual outcome, compared to what would have happened if I had chosen option (or “means”) B
I made the right choice, given the information I had at the time
Therefore, from this example it certainly seems like good intentions do justify the means. But perhaps you meant something else by “good intentions”?
that if you mean well and can convince yourself that the consequences of an action will be good, then that action is right for you and nobody has any business criticizing you for taking it.
Certainly it is bad to delude yourself, but it seems like that is just a case of having the wrong intentions… that is, you should have intended to prevent yourself from becoming deluded in the first place, proceeding carefully and realizing that as a human you are likely to make errors in judgement.
I’m confused. Consequentialists do not have access to the actual outcomes when they are making their decisions, so using that as a guideline for making moral decisions is completely unhelpful.
It also seems that your statement that good intentions don’t justify the means is false. Consider this counterexample:
I have 2 choices A and B. Option A produces 2 utilons with 50% probability and −1 utilon the rest of the time. Choice B is just 0 utilons with 100% probability.
My expected utility for option A is +0.5 utilons which is greater than the 0 utilons for option B so I choose option A.
Let’s say I happen to get the −1 utilon in the coin flip.
At this point, it seems the following three things are true:
I had good intentions
I had a bad actual outcome, compared to what would have happened if I had chosen option (or “means”) B
I made the right choice, given the information I had at the time
Therefore, from this example it certainly seems like good intentions do justify the means. But perhaps you meant something else by “good intentions”?
Certainly it is bad to delude yourself, but it seems like that is just a case of having the wrong intentions… that is, you should have intended to prevent yourself from becoming deluded in the first place, proceeding carefully and realizing that as a human you are likely to make errors in judgement.