you can include this in the utility calculation too?
Exactly. Not only can, but must. Naive consequentialism (looking at short-term easily-considered factors ONLY and ignoring the complex and longer-term impact) is just dumb. Sane consequentialism includes all changes to the world conditional on an action. In many (perhaps the vast majority) cases, the impact on others’ trust and ease of modeling you is much bigger than the immediate visible consequence of an action.
And, since more distant and compounded consequences are MUCH harder to calculate, it’s quite often better to follow the heuristics of a deontological ruleset rather than trying to calculate everything. It’s still consequentialism under the covers, and there may be a few cases in one’s life that it IS better (for one’s terminal goals) to break a rule or oath, but those are extremely rare. Rare enough that they may mostly be of interest to intellectuals and researchers trying to find universal mechanisms, rather than just living good lives.
Exactly. Not only can, but must. Naive consequentialism (looking at short-term easily-considered factors ONLY and ignoring the complex and longer-term impact) is just dumb. Sane consequentialism includes all changes to the world conditional on an action. In many (perhaps the vast majority) cases, the impact on others’ trust and ease of modeling you is much bigger than the immediate visible consequence of an action.
And, since more distant and compounded consequences are MUCH harder to calculate, it’s quite often better to follow the heuristics of a deontological ruleset rather than trying to calculate everything. It’s still consequentialism under the covers, and there may be a few cases in one’s life that it IS better (for one’s terminal goals) to break a rule or oath, but those are extremely rare. Rare enough that they may mostly be of interest to intellectuals and researchers trying to find universal mechanisms, rather than just living good lives.