Consequences do not trickle down
Diogo Santos (University of Lisbon, LanCog)

25 February 2022, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – GMT) | Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: I have argued that consequentialists should endorse what I call the No Trickle Down Principle (NTD), which is a restriction on what counts as consequence of an isolated action. In its stronger version NTD states that for any sequence of actions S initiated by an isolated action A, consequences of S are not consequences of A. The adoption of the principle allows for consequentialism to, at the very least, improve its standing when confronted with the classical epistemic objection. Notwithstanding the reasons for NTD, there are seeming unpalatable consequences from endorsing it. I focus on addressing two of these: (i) without further classification, the principle wrongly predicts that some isolated actions do not generate the consequences they actually generate; (ii) the principle entails that permissible isolated actions can initiate impermissible sequences and that impermissible isolated actions can initiate permissible sequences. I address (i) by proposing a distinction between isolated actions and sequence of actions which borrows ideas from the literature on collective action and I assuage the second concern by showing that there is an interesting parallel between NTD and compelling non-reductive approaches to team agency and collective responsibility.

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