Utilitarianism and Consequentialism

Going back to some of our discussions in class on utilitarianism, one aspect of a utilitarian view of ethics is how it is ultimately focused on the outcome of actions as they specifically affect the happiness of people. In philosophical terms, this makes utilitarianism a form of consequentialism, which basically holds that the morality of an action is determined solely by its outcome. While some form of consequentialism seems like a straightforward and somewhat fair way of inspecting the morality of actions, issues arise in the application in many circumstances.

For one, consequentialism would arguably justify the idea that the ends justify the means in any situation, so any action, no matter how abhorrent and damaging to some people it is, could be justified if it increased the overall happiness of everyone. However, it is also possible to argue that consequentialism could be used to argue against such actions if they result in hurting people along the way. To me, a more interesting ethical issue with consequentialism is the moral distinction between similar actions with vastly different consequences resulting from what is essentially bad luck. If two people both text while driving and are similarly distracted, but one of them kills an innocent person in a crash while nothing happens to the other, are they equally morally responsible? I feel like many would say that the person who actually caused an accident is more morally wrong, but this moral judgement seems slightly unfair as there was no difference between their actions themselves. Also, you could consider how this ethical calculus changes when an action is more likely to cause a bad result. As an example, I feel like many would consider two people who both drive while drunk more morally equivalent even if only one of them caused an accident as drunk driving is more likely to result in something bad than texting while driving. These are just some of the interesting ethical questions that exist under consequentialist systems of ethics that I think are important to consider when we judge other people's actions.