Doing Wrong with Others: Multi-Agent Consequentialism as a Solution for the Collective Action Problem

According to Maximizing Objective Act-Consequentialism (MOAC)—more a family of theories than a specific doctrine—the concepts of the right and the best are closely intertwined. moac theories assert that an action is right if and only if no alternative action has better consequences. This criterion of rightness seems, however, to be an expression of a more general view, according to which the ‘core function’ of morality consists in implicitly coordinating collective actions: those actions that, if carried out, lead to the morally best world that moral agents can collectively bring about are to be designated as right. This idea, prominently referred to as the Principle of Moral Harmony by Fred Feldman (1980), was considered unchallenged dogma within the consequentialist community until the second half of the 20th century (for example, see Baier 1958; Bentham 2007; Castañeda 1974; Mackie 1977). However, whether moac theories can meet this expectation is questionable. Various circumstances—overdetermination and preemption, as well as the apparent existence of effects that, considered in isolation, are negligible but accumulate into significant harm—seem to allow the existence of collective decision situations in which combinations of actions yield collectively suboptimal results, even though no agent could have made a difference for the better by acting differently unilaterally. Consequently, such actions are apparently right according to moac theories, yet they lead to suboptimal outcomes. This puzzle, known as the Challenge of Collective Action, has questioned consequentialism for decades (see Glover and Scott-Taggart 1975; Kagan 2011; Parfit 1984; Pinkert 2015; Regan 1980; Zimmerman 1996). This dissertation aims to reconstruct and understand the Challenge of Collective Action in its various forms and ultimately propose a novel consequentialist solution. Significantly based on game-theoretical considerations, the proposed solution results in a new and generalized moac theory, Multi-Agent Consequentialism, that is well-suited for multiple agents. The overarching aim of this work is to preserve the Principle of Moral Harmony as a fundamental motivation of consequentialist theorizing and, at the same time, to offer a decidedly objective-consequentialist solution to the Challenge of Collective Action.