---
slug: consequentialism
name: Consequentialism
one_liner: "Evaluate an action solely by the goodness of the states of affairs it brings about — the outcome-anchored pole of the locus-of-moral-value axis whose character pole is virtue ethics and whose act/rule pole is deontology."
type: prime
schema_version: 2
status: density_v2_draft
categories: [social, epistemic, economic]
origin_domain: moral_philosophy
alternate_origin_domains: [economics_and_decision_theory, political_theory, public_policy, artificial_intelligence]
aliases: [outcome_based_ethics, teleological_ethics, results_based_evaluation, ends_based_reasoning, utilitarian_family]
related: []
solution_archetypes: []
review_flags:
- "OPERATOR-DERIVED (op-01 dualization, sub-flavor 1b) — the outcome-locus dual of `virtue_ethics` along the locus-of-moral-value axis (character vs. outcome). Discovered in the op-01 full sweep 2026-07-03. Verified absent via search_prime + slug check. DOUBLE lattice gap: `virtue_ethics` and `moral_relativism` present but consequentialism AND deontology absent — recommend also queueing `deontology` (the act/rule pole). STATUS: RECOMMENDED ACCEPT."
- "Created 2026-07-03; STUB ONLY (frontmatter + Core Idea + Notes). Did NOT go through Phase-A triage. SI/SF/similarity grades are PROPOSER ESTIMATES pending triangulation. Body sections (Structural Signature onward) NOT yet written."
- "Phase-C action: re-similarity-check vs `virtue_ethics`, `deontology`, `moral_relativism`, and any decision-theory / expected-utility prime to confirm it does not collapse into a general 'optimize an objective' pattern; draw the three-pole sibling edges (virtue_ethics, deontology) and a proposed-parent edge to a normative-ethics genus at incorporation. Sync one_liner to a v1 draft per CLAUDE.md before merge."
substrate_independence:
  composite_substrate_independence: 3
  domain_breadth: 3
  structural_abstraction: 3
  transfer_evidence: 3
  reasoning: 'The bare structure — rank options only by a valuation over the states of affairs they produce, treating everything about an option other than its results (who does it, by what rule, from what character) as morally inert — is a clean relational form and recurs beyond ethics: expected-utility maximization in decision theory, welfare/objective-function evaluation in economics, outcome-based policy assessment, and reward-driven optimization in AI planning all instantiate it. But the pattern carries real normative and evaluative content (it presupposes a goodness ordering over outcomes and the claim that only outcomes count), so it is not medium-neutral the way a pure scheduling or graph relation is; that keeps structural abstraction and domain breadth around 3. Transfer is genuine across ethics, economics, and decision theory but is bound to value-laden practice, hence a composite 3 — a mid-scale, partly-framed abstraction rather than a fully substrate-independent structure.'
similarity_to_nearest_existing_prime:
  slug: virtue_ethics
  similarity: 0.55
structural_framed:
  label: framed
  aggregate: 0.78
  criteria: {vocab_travels: 0.4, evaluative_weight: 1.0, institutional_origin: 0.6, human_practice_bound: 0.8, import_vs_recognize: 0.6}
  rationale: 'Consequentialism is a normative-ethical position: its whole content is a claim about what makes actions right (their outcomes), so evaluative weight is maximal and the pattern is bound to the human practice of moral and policy justification. It originates in moral philosophy as a named institutional tradition (Bentham/Mill utilitarianism and successors) and is imported as a doctrine rather than recognized as a bare structure, though its outcome-ranking skeleton does travel into decision theory and welfare economics, which pulls a few criteria off the ceiling. On balance it reads clearly framed.'
phase_b_passes_completed: []
---
# Consequentialism

## Core Idea

Consequentialism is the normative stance that *the moral worth of an action lies entirely in the states of affairs it brings about* — an option is to be evaluated, and ranked against its alternatives, solely by the goodness of its outcomes, with everything else about the option (who performs it, under what rule, from what motive or character) treated as morally inert except insofar as it changes those outcomes. It is one pole of a single axis — *where moral value is located* — whose character pole is `virtue_ethics` (goodness resides in stable traits of the agent) and whose act/rule pole is `deontology` (goodness resides in conformity to duties or constraints on the act itself). Consequentialism anchors value downstream, in results: the fundamental question shifts from *what kind of person should I be* or *what rule binds this act* to *which available option produces the best world*.

The structure has three load-bearing commitments. First, there is a *ranking over outcomes* — a valuation (welfare, preference-satisfaction, or any specified good) that orders possible states of affairs from better to worse; without such an ordering there is nothing for the results to be measured against. Second, there is *agent-and-act neutrality*: features of an option other than its consequences carry no independent moral weight, so two acts producing the same outcome are morally equivalent however different their manner, motive, or rule. Third, there is a *maximizing (or optimizing) selection*: the right option is the one whose outcome ranks highest, which makes the theory continuous with optimization — pick the action that maximizes the objective. The characteristic payoff is *action-guiding tractability and impartiality*: consequentialism converts moral choice into a comparison of results, so it scales to aggregates (whole populations, policies, long horizons) and refuses to privilege the agent's own position. The characteristic cost is the mirror of that strength — because only outcomes count, the structure will license any act, however intuitively abhorrent, whose results rank highest, and it is silent on the distribution, the means, and the constraints that the rival poles make central. This is the recurring tension in every consequentialist system: an outcome-only ledger that is powerfully tractable and impartial, and for exactly that reason permissive about means and blind to agent-relative and deontic limits.

Read structurally rather than as a doctrine, the same move recurs wherever choice is anchored to results. In *decision theory* it is expected-utility maximization — rank acts by the value of the states they yield, weighted by probability. In *welfare economics and policy* it is the evaluation of institutions and interventions by their outcomes for aggregate wellbeing (cost-benefit, social-welfare functions). In *artificial-intelligence planning* it is reward- or objective-driven action selection, where an agent is defined precisely as a maximizer of expected return over resulting states — and where the "will optimize any means to the ranked end" cost reappears as specification gaming and reward hacking. Across these substrates the recognizable skeleton is the same: fix a valuation over end-states, strip moral weight from everything but those end-states, and choose to maximize.

## Notes

**Provenance.** Produced by the op-01 dualization operator, sub-flavor 1b, as the *outcome-locus dual* of `virtue_ethics` along the locus-of-moral-value axis: virtue ethics places value in character, consequentialism places it in the resulting states of affairs. Surfaced in the op-01 full sweep on 2026-07-03 and marked ACCEPT in the manifest.

**For owner evaluation (keep/cut).** The case FOR: consequentialism is one of the three canonical families of normative ethics and its absence is a conspicuous, well-defined lattice hole — the corpus already holds `virtue_ethics` and `moral_relativism`, so the outcome pole and (per the manifest) the deontological act/rule pole are the two obvious missing anatomy pieces of a standard map. It is a named, load-bearing structure with a clean dual relation, not a coinage, and its outcome-ranking skeleton has real transfer into decision theory, welfare economics, and AI reward-maximization, which gives it more structural reach than a purely ethical doctrine would have. The specific risks Kurt should weigh: (1) **framed/evaluative** — this is a value-laden normative position (structural-framed estimate ~0.78, label *framed*), so it sits well toward the framed end and the corpus's inclusion bar for framed primes applies; it is admitted as an *anatomy* prime, not a structure-first one. (2) **Screen overlap with an optimization/expected-utility prime** — the maximizing-selection component means consequentialism risks reading as "moral optimization," i.e. a value-frame wrapped around a general optimize-an-objective structure; if the corpus has or later adds an expected-utility / objective-maximization prime, the boundary must be drawn deliberately (consequentialism = *only outcomes carry moral weight*, which is the normative claim the bare optimizer lacks). (3) **Pair/lattice-completion signal** — the manifest flags a DOUBLE gap: accepting consequentialism without also queueing `deontology` leaves the three-pole set lopsided; recommend deciding both together so the axis is completed coherently.

**At incorporation.** Re-run similarity against `virtue_ethics`, `moral_relativism`, `deontology` (once drafted), and any decision-theory / expected-utility / optimization prime to confirm no collapse. Draw the sibling edges to `virtue_ethics` and `deontology` (three poles of the locus-of-moral-value axis) and a subsumption edge up to a normative-ethics / theory-of-right-action genus if one exists or is created. Queue `deontology` as the companion accept. Write a v1 draft and sync the one_liner across v1 and v2 per CLAUDE.md before merge.
