Wouldn’t a rational consequentialist estimate the odds that the policy will have unpredictable and harmful consequences, and take this into consideration?
Regardless of how well it works, consequentialism essentially underlies public policy analysis and I’m not sure how one would do it otherwise. (I’m talking about economists calculating deadweight loss triangles and so on, not politicians arguing that “X is wrong!!!”)
Wouldn’t a rational consequentialist estimate the odds that the policy will have unpredictable and harmful consequences, and take this into consideration?
The discussion was about consequentialist heuristics, not hypothetical perfectly rational agents.
I think the central trick is that you don’t aim at the ultimate good in public policy, just things like fairness, aggreegated life years and so on. You can decide that spending a certain amount of money will save X lives in road safety, or Y lives in medicine, and so on, without worrying that you might be saving the life of the next Hitler.
Few of us do public policy on a daily basis, but many of us have opinions on it, and of those that don’t most of us have friends that do. Not that having correct policy judgment buys you much in that context, consequentially speaking; I think the hedonic implications would probably end up being decided by how much you need to keep beliefs on large-scale policy coherent with beliefs on small-scale matters that you can actually affect nontrivially.
Few of us do public policy on a daily basis, but many of us have opinions on it, and of those that don’t most of us have friends that do. Not that having correct policy judgment buys you much in that context, consequentially speaking; I think the hedonic implications would probably end up being decided by how much you need to keep beliefs on large-scale policy coherent with beliefs on small-scale matters that you can actually affect nontrivially.
People that have little chance of ever actually doing public policy have virtually no incentive to have true beliefs about it and even if they did, they likely wouldn’t get enough feedback to know if their heuristics about it are accurate.
even if they did, they likely wouldn’t get enough feedback to know if their heuristics about it are accurate.
Unfortunately, the same frequently applies to the people who actually do do public policy, especially since they are frequently not effected by their own decisions.
Unfortunately, the same frequently applies to the people who actually do do public policy, especially since they are frequently not effected by their own decisions.
Consequentialism works really well as an everyday heuristic also. Particularly when it comes to public policy.
That would require being able to predict the results of public policy decisions with a reasonable degree of accuracy.
Wouldn’t a rational consequentialist estimate the odds that the policy will have unpredictable and harmful consequences, and take this into consideration?
Regardless of how well it works, consequentialism essentially underlies public policy analysis and I’m not sure how one would do it otherwise. (I’m talking about economists calculating deadweight loss triangles and so on, not politicians arguing that “X is wrong!!!”)
The discussion was about consequentialist heuristics, not hypothetical perfectly rational agents.
I think the central trick is that you don’t aim at the ultimate good in public policy, just things like fairness, aggreegated life years and so on. You can decide that spending a certain amount of money will save X lives in road safety, or Y lives in medicine, and so on, without worrying that you might be saving the life of the next Hitler.
My point still stands.
Maybe, but it doesn’t reflect back on the usefulness of c-ism as a fully fledged moral theory.
This discussion was about consequentialism as an everyday heuristic.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t do public policy on a day to day basis.
Few of us do public policy on a daily basis, but many of us have opinions on it, and of those that don’t most of us have friends that do. Not that having correct policy judgment buys you much in that context, consequentially speaking; I think the hedonic implications would probably end up being decided by how much you need to keep beliefs on large-scale policy coherent with beliefs on small-scale matters that you can actually affect nontrivially.
People that have little chance of ever actually doing public policy have virtually no incentive to have true beliefs about it and even if they did, they likely wouldn’t get enough feedback to know if their heuristics about it are accurate.
Unfortunately, the same frequently applies to the people who actually do do public policy, especially since they are frequently not effected by their own decisions.
True enough.