Consequences of non-consequentialism are disastrous. Just look at charity—instead of trying to get most good-per-buck people donate because this “make them a better person” or “is the right thing to do”—essentially throwing this all away.
If we got our act together, and did the most basic consequentialist thing of establishing monetary value per death and suffering prevented, the world would immediately become a far less sucky place to live than it is now.
This world is so filled with low hanging fruits we’re not taking only because of backwards morality it’s not even funny.
You are committing fundamental attribution error if you think people are coherently “consequentialist” or coherently “not consequentialist”, just like it’s FAE to think people are coherently “honest” / “not honest” etc. All this is situational, and it would be good to push everyone into more consequentialism in contexts where it matters most—like charity and public policy.
It matters less if people are consequentialist when dealing with their pets or deciding how to redecorate their houses, so there’s less point focusing on those. And there’s zero evidence that spill between different areas where you can be “consequentialist” would be even large enough to bother, let alone basing ethics on that.
You are committing fundamental attribution error if you think people are coherently “consequentialist” or coherently “not consequentialist”, just like it’s FAE to think people are coherently “honest” / “not honest” etc.
This is false.
The FAE is to attribute someone’s actions to a trait of character when they are actually caused by situational factors. This does not imply that it’s always an error to posit traits of character.
ETA: it still might be the case that there are no consistent habits of action, in which case it would always be a case of the FAE to attribute actions to habits, but I think the burden of proof is on you for denying habits.
That’s why I wouldn’t suggest anyone to switch entirely over to virtue ethics, but to rather have a virtue ethical layer inside a generally consequentialist framework in such a way that your virtues are always grounded in consequentialism.
Instead of trying to get most good-per-buck people donate because this “make them a better person” or “is the right thing to do”—essentially throwing this all away.
Er, by your values, maybe. They could just as easily argue that good-per-buck reasoning reduces the amount of love and charity in everyone’s life, making the world an experientially poorer place, and that there’s more to life than practical consequences.
I think you’d need to be specific about your definitions for ‘practical’ and ‘consequences’ to argue for that. I think in hereabouts parlance, you’re saying something like “Your utility function might put a higher value on ‘love’ and ‘charity’ than on strangers’ lives”. Which would be a harder bullet to bite.
They could just as easily argue that good-per-buck reasoning reduces the amount of love and charity in everyone’s life, making the world an experientially poorer place
Consequences of non-consequentialism are disastrous. Just look at charity—instead of trying to get most good-per-buck people donate because this “make them a better person” or “is the right thing to do”—essentially throwing this all away.
If we got our act together, and did the most basic consequentialist thing of establishing monetary value per death and suffering prevented, the world would immediately become a far less sucky place to live than it is now.
This world is so filled with low hanging fruits we’re not taking only because of backwards morality it’s not even funny.
But: “You can be a virtue ethicist whose virtue is to do the consequentialist thing to do”
You are committing fundamental attribution error if you think people are coherently “consequentialist” or coherently “not consequentialist”, just like it’s FAE to think people are coherently “honest” / “not honest” etc. All this is situational, and it would be good to push everyone into more consequentialism in contexts where it matters most—like charity and public policy.
It matters less if people are consequentialist when dealing with their pets or deciding how to redecorate their houses, so there’s less point focusing on those. And there’s zero evidence that spill between different areas where you can be “consequentialist” would be even large enough to bother, let alone basing ethics on that.
This is false.
The FAE is to attribute someone’s actions to a trait of character when they are actually caused by situational factors. This does not imply that it’s always an error to posit traits of character.
ETA: it still might be the case that there are no consistent habits of action, in which case it would always be a case of the FAE to attribute actions to habits, but I think the burden of proof is on you for denying habits.
That’s why I wouldn’t suggest anyone to switch entirely over to virtue ethics, but to rather have a virtue ethical layer inside a generally consequentialist framework in such a way that your virtues are always grounded in consequentialism.
Er, by your values, maybe. They could just as easily argue that good-per-buck reasoning reduces the amount of love and charity in everyone’s life, making the world an experientially poorer place, and that there’s more to life than practical consequences.
I think you’d need to be specific about your definitions for ‘practical’ and ‘consequences’ to argue for that. I think in hereabouts parlance, you’re saying something like “Your utility function might put a higher value on ‘love’ and ‘charity’ than on strangers’ lives”. Which would be a harder bullet to bite.
I was saying that “they could just as easily argue”—ie. I was using the terms that those people would use.
But that is an appeal to practical consequences.