If purpose is just another side of cause, is everyone a consequentialist?

Question

Purpose is just another side of cause. This is what I take as a premise. One might change "cause" by "reason" sometimes, both are related.

Every non-randomistic process has some end after which this process can stop. This end may be unreachable in any finite time, but taking recursively enumerable function, it is. Otherwise it is randomistic process. This end is what I call purpose.

Even two electrons, when they move away (effect) from each other, do it because of electromagnetic force (causal part). At the same time they do it in order to be as distant from each other as possible (purposal part). Now, we may assume that every effect is connected to some purpose. There is another, different from currect, state of things that seems to be more appropriate/better/more suitable to the laws of physics/etc.

So, when we may examine philosophers. Since philosopher also had some effects on our world and society, or in plain words, they just affected our world and society, then they had some purpose. This is also true for value philosophies. E.g. Aristotle and Kant developed their moral philosophies in order to change state of things. Change governance, law, social attitudes, etc. If they did not want to change things, then they would not have purpose. And then there would be no their moral philosophies. Also, their philosophies contain such notions as telos and maxim which are linked with the notion of purpose.

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Now we can move to consequentialism part. At first, there are at least two completely unequal forms of consequentialism. One says consequences of actions made are the basis for their judgement. Now we can look at one example of this:

Suppose there are two persons who want to kill innocent people. The first one was successful in doing that and therefore commited murder. Another one, was unlucky and could not kill innocent person he chose as a victim. So, since actions of the first one resulted in worse consequences, he deserves more severe punishment.

Another form of consequentialism says, that one should strive for the best consequences. Therefore, it involves the notion of intention. According to it both people who intended to kill people are equally wrong, since they wanted the samely bad consequences.

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So, assuming second definition of consequentialism, whatever consequences are counted as bad or good, is everyone a consequentialist?

Answer 1

Purpose is just another side of cause. This is what I take as a premise. One might change "cause" by "reason" sometimes, both are related.

Those terms don't get used the same way.

At the same time they do it in order to be as distant from each other as possible (purposal part).

This is really questionable. You're inserting at least a teleology, but likely even more. "Purpose" is a term we'll usually only apply when there's an actor. Elecrons aren't actors, so it seems misleading.

There is another, different from currect, state of things that seems to be more appropriate/better/more suitable to the laws of physics/etc.

It's not "more suitable", it's just a result from the laws of physics acting upon the state over time. Something unsuitable would be a change that is contradicting the laws of physics.

If they did not want to change things, then they would not have purpose. And then there would be no their moral philosophies. Also, their philosophies contain such notions as telos and maxim which are linked with the notion of purpose.

Even if we hold that notion of purpose unproblematic, then we'd still have to get from purpose to "consequence". But that's not the same.

So, assuming second definition of consequentialism, whatever consequences are counted as bad or good, is everyone a consequentialist?

Honestly, I think you could've posed that question without the part beforehand. I think it's a good question. There have been some ideas proposed that would answer negatively. I'll give one rough explanation below and afterwards link to further reading.

Let's compare your second definition, also called "expected consequentialism", with the CI. Expected consequentialism selects whether an act is morally good by intention of a best result. The best result is supported by some kind of theory of value. But more importantly, it's agent-neutral: when assessing an act for best consequences, we don't care about our own behaviour only. But instead we care about changing the state of the world through our behaviour. Kant's CI on the other hand doesn't really go over a theory of value. But more importantly, it will typically work agent-relative. Murder is categorically wrong, so even if murdering someone prevents that person from murdering more people, this wouldn't make murdering right. (Although, there are some interpretations that might make it permissable in some scenarios. But even then, it would work agent-relative in assessing the rightness of behaviour.)

So if we were to change our expected consequentialism by using a theory of value that mimics Kant's CI then it's still agent-neutral. If we make it agent-relative then it'd be weird to call it consequentialism, because we don't just care about consequences anymore. So it seems that there are at least some theories that aren't consequentialism.

More about the agent-relativity vs. agent-neutrality here: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reasons-agent/

More explanation about why not every theory can be "consequentialized" can be found starting with this paper (which also uses the agent neutrality/relativity distinction as part of a definition of consequentialism): https://philpapers.org/rec/BROCT

Answer 2

How sure can you be of people's intentions? On a practical level, we know if someone suceeds in murder they definitely had a strong conviction to do it, and if they failed they may have had a weaker one. And the law is about what can be shown 'beyond reasonable doubt'.

You are muddling things up. Material 'causes', and human intentions as 'causes'. They are not actually equivalent. Human intentions are really computational heuristics, simplifications that model a supervening explanatory layer. That is, we can never gain the kind of strength of certainty about them we do of billiard balls hitting one another. It is easy to forget we are preceding by metaphor. Similarly, we imagine physical 'laws' out there, and forget that we are drawing an anaology to legal proceedings - as shown by Cartwright's 'How The Laws Of Physics Lie'.

Take the Stoic perspective. Consequences are no business of ours, because in truth they are beyond our control. Our business is to keep our attention on what we can shape, our intentions. For the Stoic the impact of their own practice is also the same. It turns out, that this is a good healthy way to be, and a lot of evidence points to it being a suc esful way to navigate life. But that is irrelevant to the practice, even though it might encourage people to take it up. The practice is to turn to what you can effect, and cease to be upset about what you cannot.

So physical cause is co fused with mental cause. And then reasons, teleological purposes, are projected on to the electrons. Another muddle. My perspective is that the fundamental categories are information, which is about events in spacetime, and meaning, which is a property of minds and their explanatory frameworks which come down to 'virtual world' models with predictive power and useful social or participative qualities - as discussed here Free Will and Intelligence Reason belongs on the meaning side, except in reference to cause which is more or less on the information side, except in regard to intentions and purposes which belong on the meaning side. Cause-and-effect conventionally belongs on the information side, in the West. But karma, at least in Buddhism, is explicitly psycological cause-and-effect. We set up toy models of abstraction from the world, and then draw conclusions from them. But never forget they are toy models, and the world will continue to be the world regardless.

What is bad or good is the result of everything you are and have been. If you can share aspects of that with a shared toy model, or parts or aspects of one, you share good and bad. But confusing objective information elements, with subjective meaning ones just muddles things up. If you take the materialist utilitarian view to it's extreme, that a calculus of consequences can be used to objectively evaluate everything, that pleasure and pain are objective moral consonants to good and bad, you end up with antinatalism and 'Better Never To Have Been' - it's an inconsistent category error with harmful consequences, it fails in both categories.