Paper's abstract

Emmanuel Bernard Picavet, Consequentialism and describing social issues
In the study of the resources and limitations of philosophical consequentialism in evaluation tasks, we often attach a special importance to the division between information that pertains to choice procedures and social-outcome information. The problems of consequentialism are standardly addressed with the starting point of the intrinsic limitations of any formulation of social-evaluation principles which would base itself solely on social outcomes, thus forgetting other aspects of individual action and social life. In this paper I try to bring the inquiry back to certain underlying questions, which relate to the conceptualization of action. It will then become apparent that a notable part of anti-consequentialist concerns can be identified with the reasons we have, from within a consequentialist conceptual framework, to reject a certain description of consequences as inadequate.


Key Words : Information
t. 48, 2004 : p. 291-304