In a review of a book by Dan Moller, I write,
In appealing to our moral intuition against committing armed robbery, has Moller found a philosophical trump card that libertarians can play against their opponents? I am doubtful. In fact, in the game of intellectual bridge, I would suggest that moral intuition is the wrong suit for libertarians to bid.
I find the consequentialist case for libertarianism more solid than the moral intuitionist case. And in the review I point out that Moller has to fall back on consequentialist arguments.
It’s A.D. 2019, do we still have moral intuitions?
I don’t trust moral codes or moral sentiments. They fail too often. But consequentialism is a good fit for my temperament.
If more people thought in terms of consequences, the consequences would presumably be much better.
The trouble with the use of the term ‘consequentialism’ is that it has become something of a euphemism or shorthand for a tacitly embedded perspective and ideological framework.
What I mean is, the people who tend to identify with or advocate for it do so as if it is in contrast to some alternative approaches, but those are, by implication, actually imaginary strawman. There are very few people who consciously embrace pure “Good Intentionalism” or nihilistic “Indifferentism” or maybe even “Let the Rules or Procedures be Followed though the Heavens Fall” bureaucraticism / legalism / deontologicalism.
Let’s say we had a different term, say, “Comparativism”. That is, when making any decision among different courses of action, you – get this – (1) try to make your best guess to anticipate or forecast what would result from each alternative, then (2) compare those guesses according to some kind of standard or value, and finally (3) pick the best one.
This could be called the “Rational Decision Making Process”. People who advocate for ‘consequentialism’ tend to position themselves rhetorically as if they are arguing against irrationalists, but again, no one consciously embraces the notion that they are knowingly and consciously choosing to be irrational or indifferent in their decision-making process.
Instead, there is an unarticulated ideological conflict between different standards and values used to compare alternatives.
True, lots of people are very shady about their true goals and standards, and will claim they are trying to optimize some ulterior variable, and ‘consequentialists’ often pounce on the contradictions and how the proposed course of action is counterproductive in terms of optimizing the stated end or purpose of the proponent.
But that isn’t actually a dispute between consequentialists and non-consequentialists. It’s a conflict between either the honest and the dishonest, or, maybe in a better case, the knowledgeable and the ignorant.
But when dishonesty and “cognitive constraint” are eliminated, one is still left with an ideological difference between two types of ‘comparativists’.
“do it because it would materially benefit you” or “do it because it is the right thing to do”
my intuition is that the later argument is the better one for convincing people to PUBLICLY commit to your preferred policy
I agree, as you see that the major political movements of the 19th and 20th Century were centered on morality, and a morality that for all its materialist presuppositions, remains pretty staunchly non-consequentialist.
For example, the Marxist critique was sharpest that “capitalism” was unjust, not that it was less efficient. There were efficiency arguments, but they were secondary.
To this day people often reply about the poverty under Communist regimes, and while I do think that is quite telling, at the end of the day I don’t think it is really an effective counter-argument to Marxist ideas. The proper counter is to show that it is evil, not that it is less productive.
That said, I don’t think most the “moral intuition” arguments are very good either. A more comprehensive, systematic, and metaphysical approach to ethics, such as in the Aristotlean/Thomistic tradition is much more sound, however dismal its prospects at the moment.
To the second half of your comment, not that I am sure a lot of support for the movements I mentioned wasn’t driven *privately* by thoughts of envy, avarice, desire for power, etc. But as you say, no one is *publicly* going to state their desire is invidious; they are going to say they want fairness, justice, benevolence, etc.
It is all quite muddled together though. Justice is a true virtue, but everyone that envies regards his envy as justice not only publicly, but even calls it that to himself.