I've been reading about objective consequentialism lately. It's
interesting how pervasive and natural the use of counterfactuals is in
this context: what an agent ought to do, people say, is whichever
available act would lead to the best outcome (if it were
chosen). Nobody thinks that an agent ought to choose whichever act
will lead to the best outcome (if it is chosen). The
reason is clear: the indicative conditional is information-relative,
but the 'ought' of objective consequentialism is not supposed to be
information-relative. (That's the point of objective
consequentialism.) The 'ought' of objective consequentialism is
supposed to take into account all facts, known and unknown. But while
it makes perfect sense to ask what would happen under condition
C given the totality of facts @, even if @ does not imply C, it
arguably makes no sense to ask what will happen under condition
C given @, if @ does not imply C.
In chapter 8 of Doing Good Better, William MacAskill argues
that we should not make a great effort to reduce our carbon emissions,
to buy Fairtrade coffee, or to boycott sweatshops. The reason is that
these actions have at best a small impact on improving other people's
lives and so the cost and effort is better spent elsewhere.
From a strictly utilitarian perspective, there is nothing to
complain about this. But strict utilitarianism is a highly
counterintuitive position. In fact, MacAskill himself rejects it when
he says that it would not be OK to consume meat from factory farms and
"offset" by donating to animal welfare organisations, even if the net
result would be less animal suffering. I agree. Whether a course of
action is right or wrong is not just a matter of the net difference it
makes to the amount of suffering in the world. But then we also have
to reconsider MacAskill's conclusions about carbon offsetting,
fairtrade, and sweatshops.
In a large election, an individual vote is almost certain to make
no difference to the outcome. Given that voting is inconvenient and time-consuming,
this raises the question whether rational citizens should bother to
vote.
It obviously depends on the citizen's values. For a completely
selfish person, the answer may well be 'no'. Different election
outcomes typically don't matter too much for an ordinary citizen's
selfish interests; and a miniscule chance of a medium-sized gain does
not offset the cost in time and inconvenience.