A doctor has one dose of a rare medication. Five patients will die without it, but a single patient arrived first and was explicitly promised the dose. Which response most accurately reflects a consequentialist approach?
AGive it to the one patient, because keeping promises is a duty that cannot be overridden by outcomes
BGive it to the five patients, because the right action is the one that produces the best consequences — here, five lives outweigh one
CAsk what a virtuous, practically wise doctor would do and follow that example
DDecline to decide because this is a metaethical question about the existence of moral facts
Consequentialism evaluates actions entirely by their outcomes. Maximizing welfare (five lives saved versus one) is the consequentialist criterion. Options A and C describe deontological and virtue-ethical approaches respectively, making them useful contrast cases. Option D reflects a category error — metaethics asks whether there are moral facts at all; normative ethics (including consequentialism) assumes there are and tries to identify them.
Question 2 Multiple Choice
A student argues: 'Consequentialism is purely about outcomes, so it simply ignores rights and duties entirely.' Which response best identifies the error?
AThe student is correct; consequentialism has no room whatsoever for rights-based reasoning
BThe student is confusing normative ethics with metaethics, which is where rights originate
CSophisticated consequentialists treat rights as reliable heuristics that tend to produce better outcomes — rights are not simply ignored, they are instrumentally valued
DThe student is confusing deontology with virtue ethics, which is the theory that actually ignores outcomes
The student treats consequentialism as cruder than it is. Rule consequentialists and many act consequentialists recognize that respecting rights reliably produces better aggregate outcomes — so rights function as practically important heuristics even within a consequentialist framework. The deeper error in the student's claim is treating the three frameworks as more mutually exclusive than they are in sophisticated practice. The frameworks are lenses that illuminate different features of moral situations, not competing algorithms that exclude each other's insights.
Question 3 True / False
Normative ethics and metaethics are concerned with the same fundamental question: whether moral facts exist in an objective sense.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: False
These are distinct branches of ethics. Metaethics asks whether moral claims can be objectively true, what moral facts could even be, and how we could have moral knowledge — it is a second-order inquiry about the nature of ethics itself. Normative ethics assumes there are better and worse answers to 'what should I do?' and tries to identify them. A consequentialist and a deontologist both engage in normative ethics; they may hold different or similar metaethical views without that directly determining their normative framework.
Question 4 True / False
A consequentialist and a deontologist can agree that lying is generally wrong while disagreeing fundamentally about why it is wrong.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: True
This is exactly right, and it captures an important point about the relationship between frameworks. The consequentialist says lying is wrong because it tends to produce bad outcomes (broken trust, social harm, miscoordination). The deontologist says lying is wrong because it violates a duty not to deceive — a categorical rule that holds regardless of outcomes. Both condemn lying in most cases; the divergence appears in edge cases where lying might produce better consequences. The frameworks agree on many verdicts but for different reasons, with different implications for hard cases.
Question 5 Short Answer
Explain how a consequentialist, a deontologist, and a virtue ethicist would each approach the question of whether to lie to protect a friend from embarrassment. What does each framework focus on, and where do they most sharply diverge?
Think about your answer, then reveal below.
Model answer: A consequentialist asks: will lying or telling the truth produce better overall outcomes? If the embarrassment is minor and the lie causes no harm, lying may be permitted or even required. A deontologist asks: is there a duty of honesty that I must not violate regardless of outcomes? Kant's categorical imperative suggests a duty not to deceive that applies even here. A virtue ethicist asks: what would an honest, compassionate person of practical wisdom do? They might tell the truth tactfully, or stay silent — attending to context. The sharpest divergence is in cases where lying clearly produces better outcomes: a consequentialist permits or demands it; a deontologist forbids it on principle.
The key insight is that each framework targets a different locus of moral evaluation. Consequentialism focuses on outcomes; deontology on the nature of the act and duties; virtue ethics on the character of the agent. They often agree in ordinary cases but diverge in hard cases — which is precisely what makes studying each framework valuable. The trolley problem is the canonical illustration of this divergence.