Comments Elsewhere

heretyk:

… why do i desire happiness? i’m not sure, but i do.

If we desire happiness for its own sake, then you’ve just answered your question: we might desire something for at least one reason other than good results, viz. because it is happiness, or a constituent part of happiness.

If, on the other hand, we desire happiness only because it causally contributes to some further set of results that we desire, then we just ask why we desire that, until we reach whatever it is that we are ultimately trying to get to by means of happiness. Wash, rinse, and repeat.

Point being, the appropriate question to ask in the debate over consequentialism is not, “Is there any reason to favor anything other than good results?” That’s obvious: there is, whether or not we clearly understand what those other reasons are. Neither consequentialists nor non-consequentialists hold any other position, if they have thought their position through. The live question between them is how narrow or how broad a range of things are in fact desirable for their own sake. Moral consequentialists typically say that the range is pretty narrow, or at least that it must categorically exclude certain sorts of things. (E.G.: non-psychological things, or things of which no human is aware, or specific performance of actions, or ….) Non-consequentialists hold that the range is broad, or at least that it can include the sorts of things that consequentialists typically categorically exclude.