ABSTRACT
Conflict between motive-consequentialism and act-consequentialism arises, in what is perhaps its most blatant form, in those cases where a given motive involves a certain disregard for consequentialist or utilitarian grounds. However, a question naturally arises as to whether an act-utilitarian or act-consequentialist agent can so sanguinely accept the fact that, on a given occasion, he has done or is about to do what he thinks is morally wrong, out of a generally good motive. The parent caught between the ‘dictates’ of love and the demands of his own act-consequentialism may well be swayed by love into a decision to give preference to his own child, and he may well feel justified, and continue to feel justified, in so acting. The attempt to produce a consequentialist moral justification for acting non-optimifically from a generally optimific motive seems as doomed to failure as the attempt to give a consequentialist moral justification for rule-utilitarianism.
