The right can be derived from the good

There is a way to connect the right and wrong with the good and bad:

1. An action is right (respectively, wrong) if and only if it is noninstrumentally good (respectively, bad) to do it.

This is compatible with there being cases where it is bad for one to do the right thing. Thus, refraining from stealing the money that one would need to sign up for a class on virtue is right and noninstrumentally good, but if the class is really effective then stealing the money might be instrumentally good for one, though noninstrumentally ba.

I think (1) is something that everyone should accept. Even consequentialists can and should accept (1) (though utilitarian consequentialists have too shallow an axiology to make (1) true). But natural law theorists might add a further claim to (1): the left-hand-side is true because the right-hand-side is true.

The title of this post contradicts the title of another recent post, but the contents do not.

Reducing the right to the good

Here is a simple reductive account of right and wrong that now seems to me to be obviously correct:

1. An action is right if and only if it is non-instrumentally wholly good; it is wrong if and only if it is non-instrumentally at least partly bad.

Think, after all, how easily we move between saying that someone acted badly and that someone acted wrongly.

If (1) is a correct reduction, then we can reduce facts about right and wrong to facts about the value of particular kinds of things, namely actions.

By the way, if we accept (1), then consequentialism is equivalent to the following thesis:

2. An action is non-instrumentally good if and only if it is on balance (instrumentally and non-instrumentally) best.

But it is quite strange to think that there be an entity that is non-instrumentally good if and only if it is on balance best.