Consequentialism only works if you can predict the consequences. I think many “failures of consequentialist thinking” could be summarized as “these people predicted that doing X will result in Y, and they turned out to be horribly wrong”.
So the question is whether your reason or emotion is a better predictor of future. Which probably depends on the type of question asked (emotions will be better for situations similar to those that existed in the ancient jungles, e.g. human relations; reason will be better for situations involving math, e.g. investing), but neither is infallible. Which means we cannot go fully consequentialist, because that means fully overconfident.
I agree with both of you that the question for consequentialists is to determine when and where an act-consequentialist decision procedure (reasoning about consequences), a deontological decision procedure (reasoning about standing duties/rules), or the decision procedure of the virtuous agent (guided by both emotions and reasoning) are better outcome producers.
But you’re missing part of the overall point here: according to many philosophers (including sophisticated consequentialists) there is something wrong/ugly/harmful about relying too much on reasoning (whether about rules or consequences). Someone who needs to reason their way to the conclusion that they should visit their sick friend in order to motivate themselves to go, is not as good a friend as the person who just feels worried and goes to visit their friend.
I am certainly not an exemplar of virtue: I regularly struggle with overthinking things. But this is something one can work on. See the last section of my post.
Consequentialism only works if you can predict the consequences. I think many “failures of consequentialist thinking” could be summarized as “these people predicted that doing X will result in Y, and they turned out to be horribly wrong”.
So the question is whether your reason or emotion is a better predictor of future. Which probably depends on the type of question asked (emotions will be better for situations similar to those that existed in the ancient jungles, e.g. human relations; reason will be better for situations involving math, e.g. investing), but neither is infallible. Which means we cannot go fully consequentialist, because that means fully overconfident.
I agree with both of you that the question for consequentialists is to determine when and where an act-consequentialist decision procedure (reasoning about consequences), a deontological decision procedure (reasoning about standing duties/rules), or the decision procedure of the virtuous agent (guided by both emotions and reasoning) are better outcome producers.
But you’re missing part of the overall point here: according to many philosophers (including sophisticated consequentialists) there is something wrong/ugly/harmful about relying too much on reasoning (whether about rules or consequences). Someone who needs to reason their way to the conclusion that they should visit their sick friend in order to motivate themselves to go, is not as good a friend as the person who just feels worried and goes to visit their friend.
I am certainly not an exemplar of virtue: I regularly struggle with overthinking things. But this is something one can work on. See the last section of my post.