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.
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.