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On Causal Consequences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

R. G. Frey
R. G. Frey*
Affiliation:
University of Liverpool
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Extract

In his Generalization in Ethics, Marcus Singer distinguishes between individual and collective consequences. According to Singer, the collective consequences of everyone's acting in a certain way is for certain kinds of acts not the sum of—or, more exactly, is greater than the sum of—the individual consequences of each individual act. The point is put more straightforwardly by Sir Roy Harrod:

There are certain acts which when performed on n similar occasions have consequences more than n times as great as those resulting from one performance . ... For example, it may well happen that the loss of confidence due to a million lies uttered within certain limits of time and space is much more than a million times as great as the loss due to any one in particular.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , December 1974 , pp. 365 - 379
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1974

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References

1 Singer, M. Generalization in Ethics (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1963), p. 67.Google Scholar

2 Harrod, R. F. “Utilitarianism Revised,” Mind, XLV (1936), p. 148CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Italics in original.

3 Lyons, D. Forms and Limits of Utilitarianism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), pp. 65ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Ibid., p. 74.

5 Ibid., p. 72. Italics in original.

6 Ibid., p. 63.

7 This use of ‘causal property’ is an unusual one, a point to which I return below.

8 Lyons does use the word ‘contributes’ in this context;op. cit., pp. 71–72.

9 Lyons at one point calls the extent to which others are behaving similarly the act's ‘social context'; ibid., p. 63.

10 Ibid., p. 115.

11 Ibid., p. 57. Italics in original. For the argument in full: ibid., pp. 56–61.

12 Ibid., p. 69.

13 Ibid.

14 Harrison, J. review of Lyons's Forms and Limits of Utilitarianism, Philosophical Books, VII (1966), p. 14.Google Scholar

15 Moore, G. E. “A Reply to My Critics,” in The Philosophy of G. E. Moore, ed. Schilpp, P. A. (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1942), p. 559. Italics in original.Google Scholar

16 Lyons, op. cit., pp. 76–80Google Scholar.

17 Ibid., p. 77.

18 I am indebted to Professors R. M. Hare and H. R. West for their comments on my first efforts in connection with this paper. An earlier draft was read to a discussion group in Oxford, from which I also received valuable assistance.