A more accurate characterization, I think, is to say that many or most EAs are consequentialists; utilitarianism is a more specific position that only a subset of consequentialists (and EAs) endorse.
Note that about one quarter of respondents in the recent PhilPapers survey accept or lean towards consequentialism; the remaining three quarters are roughly equally divided between those who accept or lean towards either deontology or virtue ethics, and those who endorse some other moral position. So I think you are exaggerating a bit the tension between the moral views of EAs and those of professional philosophers.
Finally, consequentialism has a feature that makes it unique among rival plausible moral views, namely, that all such views agree that good outcomes are at least part of what matters morally. Consequentialists take the further step of claiming that good outcomes are the only thing that matters. (By contrast, there is no component in deontology of virtue ethics that is shared by all other rival views, other than the consequentialist component.) It follows from this feature that research on what consequentialism implies has, in principle, relevance for all other theories, since such theories could be understood as issuing requirements that coincide with those of consequentialism except when they come into conflict with other requirements that they may issue (e.g., for some forms of deontology, you should maximize good unless this violates people’s rights, so when no rights are violated these theories imply that you should act as a consequentialist).
In modern discourse, varieties of consequentialism and utilitarianism have family resemblance sufficient to warrant their interchange in utterance, in my opinion. If you think otherwise, and mark the relevant function of their distinction, I will observe it.
As for the substance of your point:
(i) in terms of its marginality, 23% (third out of four, one long dead) is appreciable but hardly impressive, given its absence from the neighbouring, larger field of political philosophy, to which I alluded (which, in the poll you cite, doesn’t include utilitarianism as an option). Moreover, if you look at the normative books achieving most (top 15) citations in post-war Anglophone philosophy, utilitarianism is absent: Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (26,768), Dworkin’s Taking Rights Seriously (7,892), MacIntyre’s After Virtue (6,579), Rawls’ Political Liberalism (6,352), Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia (6,246). The first possible utilitarian is all the way down at 30, at Parfit’s Reasons and Persons, with just 2,972 citations (which no one would ever call utilitarian, and which is only very partially ethically concerned at that). That is to say, liberal egalitarianism (Rawls seconded by Dworkin) is completely dominant, with Aristotelianism (MacIntyre) and libertarianism (Nozick) trailing. Of course, most citations of MacIntyre probably affirm his positive argument of the failure of the Enlightenment project, and reject his substitute reversion to Aristotelianism. In that sense, it might even be a two-horse race (although, again, it’s not really a race: liberal egalitarianism boasts over 40,000 citations between the three works above, libertarianism just 6,000). I should also add that the other lead works are not favourable to the whole enterprise of ethics: Wittgenstein, Rorty, Kuhn and so forth. If you allow the continent, Foucault and Sartre shoot to the top and below Rawls respectively, at the very least, I imagine (Beauvoir’s The Second Sex probably ranks as well).
(ii) I agree that researching optimum means of bringing about ones preferred unit of consequence can well integrate with a wider plurality of values; my issue is internal to the movement however, as I have discussed above with some elaboration
Your original claim concerned moral philosophy, but the evidence you provide in your latest comment predominantly concerns political philosophy. Consequentialism (a moral view) is compatible with liberalism (a political view), so evidence for the popularity of liberalism is not itself evidence for the unpopularity of consequentialism.
Furthermore, a representative poll where professional philosophers can state their preferred moral views directly seems to be a better measure of the relative popularity of those views in the philosophy profession than citation counts of books published over a given time period. The latter may be relied upon as an imperfect proxy for the former in the absence of poll data, but their evidential relevance diminishes considerably once such data becomes available.
Note, too, that using your criterion we should conclude that falsificationism—advocated in Conjectures and Refutations and Scientific Knowledge—is the dominant position in philosophy of science, when it is in fact moribund. Similarly, that ranking would misleadingly suggest that eliminative materialism—advocated in Consciousness Explained—is the dominant view in philosophy of mind, when this isn’t at all the case. In fact, many if not most of the books cited in that ranking represent positions that have largely fallen out of favor in contemporary analytic philosophy; this is at least the case with Kuhn, MacIntyre, Ryle, Rorty, Searle and maybe Fodor, besides Popper and Dennett. In addition, owing to discrepancies in the number of philosophers who work in different philosophical areas and the popularity of some of these areas in disciplines outside philosophy, the poll grossly overrepresents some areas (political philosophy, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind) and underrepresents others of at least comparable importance (metaphysics, epistemology, normative ethics), strongly suggesting that it is particularly ill-suited for comparisons spanning multiple areas (such as one involving both normative ethics and political philosophy) and further strengthening the case for relying on poll data over citation counts.
Let me however highlight that I agree with you that the high prevalence of consequentialists in the EA movement is a striking fact that raises various concerns and certainly deserves further thought and study.
A more accurate characterization, I think, is to say that many or most EAs are consequentialists; utilitarianism is a more specific position that only a subset of consequentialists (and EAs) endorse.
Note that about one quarter of respondents in the recent PhilPapers survey accept or lean towards consequentialism; the remaining three quarters are roughly equally divided between those who accept or lean towards either deontology or virtue ethics, and those who endorse some other moral position. So I think you are exaggerating a bit the tension between the moral views of EAs and those of professional philosophers.
Finally, consequentialism has a feature that makes it unique among rival plausible moral views, namely, that all such views agree that good outcomes are at least part of what matters morally. Consequentialists take the further step of claiming that good outcomes are the only thing that matters. (By contrast, there is no component in deontology of virtue ethics that is shared by all other rival views, other than the consequentialist component.) It follows from this feature that research on what consequentialism implies has, in principle, relevance for all other theories, since such theories could be understood as issuing requirements that coincide with those of consequentialism except when they come into conflict with other requirements that they may issue (e.g., for some forms of deontology, you should maximize good unless this violates people’s rights, so when no rights are violated these theories imply that you should act as a consequentialist).
In modern discourse, varieties of consequentialism and utilitarianism have family resemblance sufficient to warrant their interchange in utterance, in my opinion. If you think otherwise, and mark the relevant function of their distinction, I will observe it.
As for the substance of your point:
(i) in terms of its marginality, 23% (third out of four, one long dead) is appreciable but hardly impressive, given its absence from the neighbouring, larger field of political philosophy, to which I alluded (which, in the poll you cite, doesn’t include utilitarianism as an option). Moreover, if you look at the normative books achieving most (top 15) citations in post-war Anglophone philosophy, utilitarianism is absent: Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (26,768), Dworkin’s Taking Rights Seriously (7,892), MacIntyre’s After Virtue (6,579), Rawls’ Political Liberalism (6,352), Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia (6,246). The first possible utilitarian is all the way down at 30, at Parfit’s Reasons and Persons, with just 2,972 citations (which no one would ever call utilitarian, and which is only very partially ethically concerned at that). That is to say, liberal egalitarianism (Rawls seconded by Dworkin) is completely dominant, with Aristotelianism (MacIntyre) and libertarianism (Nozick) trailing. Of course, most citations of MacIntyre probably affirm his positive argument of the failure of the Enlightenment project, and reject his substitute reversion to Aristotelianism. In that sense, it might even be a two-horse race (although, again, it’s not really a race: liberal egalitarianism boasts over 40,000 citations between the three works above, libertarianism just 6,000). I should also add that the other lead works are not favourable to the whole enterprise of ethics: Wittgenstein, Rorty, Kuhn and so forth. If you allow the continent, Foucault and Sartre shoot to the top and below Rawls respectively, at the very least, I imagine (Beauvoir’s The Second Sex probably ranks as well).
Reference: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2009/11/the-most-cited-books-in-postwwii-anglophone-philosophy.html
(ii) I agree that researching optimum means of bringing about ones preferred unit of consequence can well integrate with a wider plurality of values; my issue is internal to the movement however, as I have discussed above with some elaboration
Your original claim concerned moral philosophy, but the evidence you provide in your latest comment predominantly concerns political philosophy. Consequentialism (a moral view) is compatible with liberalism (a political view), so evidence for the popularity of liberalism is not itself evidence for the unpopularity of consequentialism.
Furthermore, a representative poll where professional philosophers can state their preferred moral views directly seems to be a better measure of the relative popularity of those views in the philosophy profession than citation counts of books published over a given time period. The latter may be relied upon as an imperfect proxy for the former in the absence of poll data, but their evidential relevance diminishes considerably once such data becomes available.
Note, too, that using your criterion we should conclude that falsificationism—advocated in Conjectures and Refutations and Scientific Knowledge—is the dominant position in philosophy of science, when it is in fact moribund. Similarly, that ranking would misleadingly suggest that eliminative materialism—advocated in Consciousness Explained—is the dominant view in philosophy of mind, when this isn’t at all the case. In fact, many if not most of the books cited in that ranking represent positions that have largely fallen out of favor in contemporary analytic philosophy; this is at least the case with Kuhn, MacIntyre, Ryle, Rorty, Searle and maybe Fodor, besides Popper and Dennett. In addition, owing to discrepancies in the number of philosophers who work in different philosophical areas and the popularity of some of these areas in disciplines outside philosophy, the poll grossly overrepresents some areas (political philosophy, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind) and underrepresents others of at least comparable importance (metaphysics, epistemology, normative ethics), strongly suggesting that it is particularly ill-suited for comparisons spanning multiple areas (such as one involving both normative ethics and political philosophy) and further strengthening the case for relying on poll data over citation counts.
Let me however highlight that I agree with you that the high prevalence of consequentialists in the EA movement is a striking fact that raises various concerns and certainly deserves further thought and study.