#  Colloquium Lecture: Alan Hájek (Australian National University), "Consequentialism, Cluelessness, Clumsiness, and Counterfactuals" 

 



####  calendar\_today Date and Time 

 **April 7, 2025** 

 03:00PM - 05:00PM EDT 

####  pin\_drop Location 

 **Emerson Hall 305**  



 

 



 

*Abstract:* According to objective consequentialism, a morally right action is one that has the best consequences. (These are not just the immediate consequences of the actions, but the long-term consequences, perhaps until the end of history.) I will argue that on one understanding this makes no sense, and on another understanding, it has a startling metaphysical presupposition concerning counterfactuals. Objective consequentialism has faced various objections, including the problem of “cluelessness”: we have no idea what most of the consequences of our actions will be. I think that on these understandings, objective consequentialism has a far worse problem: its very foundations are highly dubious. Even granting these foundations, a worse problem than cluelessness remains, which I call “clumsiness”. Moreover, I think that these problems quickly generalise to a number of other moral theories. But the point is most easily made for objective consequentialism, so I will focus largely on it.



 

 



 

 

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