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| Ann
Speaking
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 I
want to push the importance of consequences a bit more. I think it
helps us to understand one way that Robert Nozick goes wrong.Nozick believes that we should rely on the moral intuitions we have in small-scale, common-place situations. Then he applies these intuitions to large scale social situations. This allows him to disregard the consequences of certain actions or policies when they occur on a large scale. Suppose, for example, that on a small scale and in a very common situation, "voluntary" agreements seem morally unobjectionable. No one would object, Nozick tells us, if Wilt Chamberlain asked each fan to pay an extra 50 cents to see him play, even though this would result in Chamberlain becoming rich. But it seems to me that we cannot extrapolate from this small-scale situation to much larger situations. There are lots of things that may seem quite all right when we look at only a few cases, or at the short-term consequences. Yet when we see the long-term consequences of following the same rule in billions of cases it seems quite unacceptable. We have to bear in mind that our moral intuitions have developed in typical, small-scale circumstances. Nozick wants to rely on these intuitions to make judgments that are then universalized and applied to an entire society. But our judgments of everyday actions were never developed in that context or for that purpose. Ordinarily, the large scale consequences of our actions are not at issue, and our ordinary intuitions do not consider them. At best, our intuitions about typical small-scale situations suggest prima facie rules of conduct. If we want to start with our intuitions about paying Wilt Chamberlain some extra money, that's fine; but we have to go on to consider the consequences of universalizing what we do in that simple case. |
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