20 - Commentary: Conflict of Interest as a Threat to Consequentialist Reasoning

Summary

Frank's chapter calls into question the vulnerability of consequentialist moral reasoning to the exploitability of the “moral wiggle room” that accompanies consequentialist methodology. Thus, consequentialist reasoning may not produce the best consequences, having been compromised by conflicts of interest, and consequentialists may find that other moral theories are actually superior in creating the improved consequences. This is an interesting thesis, and one with which I completely agree. In fact, Frank may have understated the case for the corruptibility of consequentialist moralizing. I will explain what I mean in the first part of this comment, and then I will make a second point that the processes that threaten consquentialist logic are not only intentional efforts to distort in self-serving directions, but also totally invisible and nonconscious processes that are difficult to eliminate (even if one were to decide they should be eliminated). Finally, I will show that the failure of an explicit maximization process like utilitarianism to maximize is not unique to moral theory.

Frank discusses some of the ways in which self-interest may bias the ways in which people trying to estimate the relevant costs and benefits that need to be calculated to make such a judgment. Surely the issue of commensurability of utilities (can I compare John's pleasure of having a lake in his neighborhood to Fred's displeasure of losing his pasture?) is an issue as is the role of agency, the matter of the equivalence of not of acts of omission and acts of commission.