consequentialism

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

the family of moral theories holding that the rightness or wrongness of an action is entirely determined by its consequences — specifically by whether it produces good outcomes such as happiness, welfare, or preference satisfaction; utilitarianism, developed by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, is the most influential consequentialist theory, holding that the right action is the one that maximises total welfare across all affected parties; consequentialism's central challenge is the aggregation problem — how to compare and combine different people's welfare — and the demandingness objection — whether it requires individuals to sacrifice personal projects and relationships whenever doing so would marginally increase aggregate welfare; Peter Singer and Derek Parfit are among its most significant contemporary proponents