PyramidHead
Contributor
The paradox goes both ways:
If consequentialism leads to undesirable outcomes, it is a bad guide for behavior.
If consequentialism is a bad guide for behavior, morality cannot be decided by consequences alone.
If morality cannot be decided by consequences alone, it does not necessarily matter that consequentialism leads to undesirable outcomes.
If it does not necessarily matter that consequentialism leads to undesirable outcomes, consequentialism is not necessarily a bad guide for behavior.
If something is logically self-contradictory, then it's fitness is suspect whether it is a bad guide for behaviour or not. The reason why you have 'necessarily' in there is because the idea that consequentialism leads to bad outcomes is a problem for consequentialism even if you don't plan on evaluating morality based on outcomes.
I think a more serious objection is that consequentialism is insufficient. Insisting that an act must be rated on the consequences of that act, only gets you from rating different acts to rating different outcomes. You still have to apply an arbitrary value system to the outcome, just as you would otherwise have done to the original act.
The point is that the values are always applied ultimately to the consequences. When it appears that values are being applied to rights, or to following rules, or to divine commands, in the end those considerations can be reduced to their outcomes. I have never come across a serious moral argument that could not be completely reduced to arguing about consequences.
I don't think you can justify 'ultimately', or 'in the end', or 'reduce to'. I've never come across a serious argument based on consequences that didn't ultimately reduce to arguments about arbitrary values. You may think that an argument about not killing people reduces to an argument about the avoiding the consequence of a lot of dead people, but you could equally argue that any argument about the consequence of a lot of dead people reduces to an arbitrary value judgement about dead people being undesirable in general.
I agree, actually. No consequences are inherently undesirable in themselves. I was just making that point to contrast with rules-based or rights-based views. Though they are phrased in terms of e.g. "murdering someone is a violation of their right to self-determination," beneath that lies the sentiment that violating one's right to self-determination is a bad thing because it makes bad things happen, and as you rightly say, we don't like those bad things so don't murder anybody please.