The real reason not to say “those fools don’t deserve our help” is that it doesn’t make sense for materialist consequentialists to weight utility based on who deserves what.
Do you know if this is a well-known position in consequentialist philosophy? It seems like it must be, but I only got as far as the Wikipedia page on deserts) and it seems to cover a discussion among deontologists,,,
There’s a fair amount of debate about what exactly the formalism of consequentialism excludes or doesn’t, and whether it’s possible to view deontological views (or indeed any other moral theory) as a subset of consequentialism. The idea that any moral view can be seen as a version of consequentlialism is often referred to as “Dreier’s conjecture” (see e.g. the discussion here.)
Usually, consequentialist aggregration functions impose an anonymity requirement, which seems to discourage desert as a consideration (it requires that the identity of individuals can’t matter to what they get). But even that doesn’t really exclude it.
The real reason not to say “those fools don’t deserve our help” is that it doesn’t make sense for materialist consequentialists to weight utility based on who deserves what.
IAWYC but “consequentialism” of itself, or “materialism” of itself, doesn’t stop us from having such a utility function.
Do you know if this is a well-known position in consequentialist philosophy? It seems like it must be, but I only got as far as the Wikipedia page on deserts) and it seems to cover a discussion among deontologists,,,
There’s a fair amount of debate about what exactly the formalism of consequentialism excludes or doesn’t, and whether it’s possible to view deontological views (or indeed any other moral theory) as a subset of consequentialism. The idea that any moral view can be seen as a version of consequentlialism is often referred to as “Dreier’s conjecture” (see e.g. the discussion here.)
Usually, consequentialist aggregration functions impose an anonymity requirement, which seems to discourage desert as a consideration (it requires that the identity of individuals can’t matter to what they get). But even that doesn’t really exclude it.