E.G.

A while back, the thesis called "Dreier’s Conjecture" was discussed at length in a series of posts by Doug Portmore from PEA Soup.  (If you haven’t already, I suggest you read Doug’s posts, which are located here, here and here, before and/or instead of reading this one.)

In the first post, Doug offers the following formulation of Dreier’s Conjecture (which I’ll call "DC" from here on):

For any moral theory M, there is some conceivable ["counterpart"] theory of the good that, when combined with the consequentialist principle “φ-ing is morally permissible iff φ-ing would produce the best available state of affairs,” yields moral verdicts that are, in every instance, identical to those of M.

I think DC is true, and will assume it’s true for the purpose of this post.  Some have claimed that DC makes the consequentialism/non-consequentialism distinction "empty."  On this view, given DC, that distinction is unimportant and uninteresting, and its central place in traditional taxonomies of moral theories is unjustified.  As Doug ably demonstrates in part III of his series, DC is clearly not strong enough to have this uncomfortable result.  DC concerns the "output" of moral theories, i.e. the verdicts moral theories yield in specific instances.  But there are other important features of moral theories.  For instance, moral theories function to explain verdicts as well as to yield them.  If it turns out that non-consequentialist moral theories are able to offer different explanations of their verdicts than consequentialist ones do, then that alone, it seems, should be enough to provide some "content" to the consequentialism/non-consequentialism distinction, even if DC turns out to be true.

However, let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, that the only distinctive or salient feature of a moral theory is the set of verdicts which it yields in specific instances.  In that case, would DC make the consequentialism/non-consequentialism distinction "empty" in the present sense? 

DC implies that for every non-consequentialist theory, there exists a "counterpart" consequentialist theory which offers the same verdicts in the same instances.  To put the point more plainly: Given DC, there’s nothing special about being a non-consequentialist; there aren’t any verdicts you, as a non-consequentialist, can offer which a consequentialist could not also offer.  But DC does not imply that for every consequentialist theory, there exists a "counterpart" non-consequentialist theory.  So DC might still be true even if there are some consequentialist theories which are "special," i.e., which offer verdicts in some instances which no non-consequentialist theory is able to offer in the same instances.  And in that case, it seems to me, there would still be some "content" to the consequentialism/non-consequentialism distinction.

So, I think, we can assume that DC is true, and assume (contrary to fact) that the only distinctive/salient/etc. feature of a moral theory is the set of verdicts which it offers in specific instances — and still have some room to argue that the consequentialism/non-consequentialism distinction is not "empty."  To make that argument, we would need to find a consequentialist theory for which no "counterpart" non-consequentialist theory, with the same verdicts rendered in the same circumstances, exists or is conceivable.  And DC, on its own, does not rule out the possibility of such a consequentialist theory.

To show that the consequentialism/non-consequentialism distinction is "empty", therefore, one needs not only DC, but also a thesis which I call "Reverse DC," which is the claim that for every consequentialist theory, there is some conceivable non-consequentialist theory with verdicts which are identical in every instance.  Unfortunately, for reasons I won’t go into here, I think Reverse DC is true; at any rate, Reverse DC appears to me to be at least as defensible as DC.

However, the above considerations do, I think, provide a possible way forward.  I think we can grant DC, and grant that the only salient feature of a moral theory is the set of verdicts which it offers in specific instances, and grant Reverse DC — and still, despite all this, find a way to show that the consequentialism/non-consequentialism distinction is not "empty" in the relevant sense.  Perhaps in a future post I’ll describe the way I have in mind.