Just ask people why they vote, and most of them will say things like “It’s a civic duty,” “Our forefathers died for this, so we shouldn’t waste it,” “If everyone didn’t vote, things would be bad,” …
These views reflect the endorsements of various trusted political figures and groups, the active promotion of voting by those with more individual influence, and the raw observation of outcomes affected by bulk political behavior.
In other words, the common sense or deontological rules of thumb are shaped by the consequences, as the consequences drive moralizing activity. Joshua Greene has some cute discussion of this in his dissertation:
I believe that this pattern is quite general. Our intuitions are not utilitarian,
and as a result it is often possible to devise cases in which our intuitions conflict
with utilitarianism. But at the same time, our intuitions are somewhat constrained
by utilitarianism. This is because we care about utilitarian outcomes, and when a
practice is terribly anti-utilitarian, there is, sooner or later, a voice in favor of
abolishing it, even if the voice is not explicitly utilitarian. Take the case of drunk
driving. Drinking is okay. Driving is okay. Doing both at the same time isn’t such
an obviously horrible thing to do, but we’ve learned the hard way that this
intuitively innocuous, even fun, activity is tremendously damaging. And now,
having moralized the issue with the help of organizations like Mothers Against
Drunk Driving—what better moral authority than Mom?—we are prepared to
impose very stiff penalties on people who aren’t really “bad people,” people with no general anti-social tendencies. We punish drunk driving and related offenses
in a way that appears (or once appeared) disproportionately harsh because
we’ve paid the utilitarian costs of not doing so.39 The same might be said of
harsh penalties applied to wartime deserters and draft-dodgers. The disposition
to avoid situations in which one must kill people and risk being killed is not such
an awful disposition to have, morally speaking, and what could be a greater
violation of your “rights” than your government’s sending you, an innocent
person, off to die against your will?40 Nevertheless we are willing to punish
people severely, as severely as we would punish violent criminals, for acting on
that reasonable and humane disposition when the utilitarian stakes are
sufficiently high.41
These views reflect the endorsements of various trusted political figures and groups, the active promotion of voting by those with more individual influence, and the raw observation of outcomes affected by bulk political behavior.
In other words, the common sense or deontological rules of thumb are shaped by the consequences, as the consequences drive moralizing activity. Joshua Greene has some cute discussion of this in his dissertation: