"They tend to be pretty abstract ones then, like doing what will have the best consequences; obviously you wouldn't specify what consequences are best, they may be different in some circumstances, so at a lower, more specific level, you may well get differences"
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Singer is letting the air out of a caricature: that consequentialism is a cold spreadsheet with one fixed answer for every moral dilemma. The line is doing quiet damage control. Yes, the guiding principles are “pretty abstract” - but that’s not a bug, it’s the point. A high-level rule like “do what will have the best consequences” is meant to travel across cases precisely because the world doesn’t cooperate with rigid moral recipes.
The subtext is a defense of flexibility that still wants to look like rigor. Singer concedes what critics love to pounce on: consequentialists don’t “specify what consequences are best” in advance, because the “best” depends on circumstances. That sounds suspiciously like moral hand-waving until you notice the move he’s making: separating levels. At the top sits an evaluative commitment (consequences matter most). Down below, where actual choices happen, pluralism and disagreement are expected - not because morality is arbitrary, but because the inputs are messy: competing goods, uncertainty, different stakeholders, different empirical facts.
Contextually, this sits inside Singer’s larger project of marrying moral philosophy to real-world decision-making (poverty, animal welfare, bioethics). He’s signaling that applied ethics isn’t a betrayal of theory; it’s where theory proves it can survive contact with reality. The “differences” he anticipates are not loopholes but the price of moral seriousness: if you can’t admit that “best” changes with context, you’re not being principled, you’re being doctrinaire. Singer’s wager is that abstraction can discipline moral intuition without pretending to replace judgment.
The subtext is a defense of flexibility that still wants to look like rigor. Singer concedes what critics love to pounce on: consequentialists don’t “specify what consequences are best” in advance, because the “best” depends on circumstances. That sounds suspiciously like moral hand-waving until you notice the move he’s making: separating levels. At the top sits an evaluative commitment (consequences matter most). Down below, where actual choices happen, pluralism and disagreement are expected - not because morality is arbitrary, but because the inputs are messy: competing goods, uncertainty, different stakeholders, different empirical facts.
Contextually, this sits inside Singer’s larger project of marrying moral philosophy to real-world decision-making (poverty, animal welfare, bioethics). He’s signaling that applied ethics isn’t a betrayal of theory; it’s where theory proves it can survive contact with reality. The “differences” he anticipates are not loopholes but the price of moral seriousness: if you can’t admit that “best” changes with context, you’re not being principled, you’re being doctrinaire. Singer’s wager is that abstraction can discipline moral intuition without pretending to replace judgment.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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