Consequentialists disagree about which consequences are important—the classic utilitarians Bentham and Mill argued that pleasure is the only value, and that we should maximise pleasure. Some contemporary consequentialists think that the classic utilitarians were right about this, but others argue that what matters is the satisfaction of preferences, or a list of objective goods, such as truth and beauty; and some consequentialists are pluralists about the good, arguing that all of these things are good, and it may not be possible to order them precisely. Most consequentialists think that we should aim for the best outcome, but some think that we should aim to bring about an outcome that is ‘good enough’. Then there are various complex and more or less technical issues about how we add up the value in consequences: should we look at the average or the total? And how should we deal with probability? (we can’t know what the consequences of our actions will be in advance, so we have to use some account of probable consequences in deciding what to do).
(Elinor Mason, "What Is Consequentialism?," Think 21 [spring 2009]: 19-28, at 21)
