In The Grieving Student, while it may be morally right in society to accept the excuse and let her have more time, how do you know she is not lying? Of course, it is her mother, and it would be horrible to lie about such things, and dangerous, as the mother could call the school or any number of other things, but she could just be lying about it to get more time. Say her mother is dead, but she died when the girl was a child. If you didn’t look hard, you could think that she had really died earlier. So, if she gave an extension at all, it should not be long. Say to the end of the day, or until the next day.
From a consequentialist perspective it doesn’t matter whether she’s lying or not: she could be lying, so if I’m seen to grant her an extension I create incentives for others to lie, which is the thing I as a consequentialist actually want to avoid. (Of course, in the real world there are ways I could find out, but that’s outside the scope of this example.)
Reducing the size of the incentive doesn’t actually address the issue. That creates less incentive, sure, but the basic problem remains unaddressed.
The more seriously we take the possibility that she’s lying, the more Grieving Student starts to resemble Lazy Student or Sports Fan.
In The Grieving Student, while it may be morally right in society to accept the excuse and let her have more time, how do you know she is not lying? Of course, it is her mother, and it would be horrible to lie about such things, and dangerous, as the mother could call the school or any number of other things, but she could just be lying about it to get more time. Say her mother is dead, but she died when the girl was a child. If you didn’t look hard, you could think that she had really died earlier. So, if she gave an extension at all, it should not be long. Say to the end of the day, or until the next day.
From a consequentialist perspective it doesn’t matter whether she’s lying or not: she could be lying, so if I’m seen to grant her an extension I create incentives for others to lie, which is the thing I as a consequentialist actually want to avoid. (Of course, in the real world there are ways I could find out, but that’s outside the scope of this example.)
Reducing the size of the incentive doesn’t actually address the issue. That creates less incentive, sure, but the basic problem remains unaddressed.
The more seriously we take the possibility that she’s lying, the more Grieving Student starts to resemble Lazy Student or Sports Fan.