Peter Singer

Well, I'm a consequentialist.

Oh, I guessed.

You guessed, yes.

Not a secret.

I have been for my entire career.

A consequentialist is somebody who thinks that the right actions are those that have the best consequences.

Whereas a deontologist essentially denies that, says sometimes an action is right, even though it will have all things considered and for everybody affected, worse consequences than some other action.

And a virtue ethicist, I think actually virtue ethics is compatible in some form with consequentialism, perhaps also with deontology.

Because virtue ethics simply says,

You should be the kind of being who has a character of virtue, that is virtuous.

And then, of course, we have to define what virtuous means.

And that's fairly open.

But a consequentialist will say, well, the virtues one should have are those that in the long run will tend to produce the best consequences.

Yeah.

I do find virtue ethics.

Sorry, go ahead.

I was just going to say, I don't really see that as a completely independent thing.

moral view.

That's right.

You can think of consequentialism as the genus and utilitarianism as the species.