Fwiw, I think the usage from moral philosophy is by far the most common outside the EA community, and probably also inside the community. So if someone uses the word “consequentialism”, I would normally assume (often unthinkingly) that they’re using it in that sense. I think that means that those who use it in any other sense should, in many contexts, be particularly careful to make clear that they’re not using the term in that way.
There is a standard distinction in ethics between act consequentialism as a criterion of rightness and as a decision procedure (see Amanda Askell’s post). Potentially that maps on to “ethical consequentialism” and “explicit consequence analysis”, depending on what you have in mind.
I certainly agree that outside EA, consequentialism just means the moral philosophy. But inside I feel like I keep seeing people use it to mean this process of decision-making, enough that I want to plant this flag.
I agree that the criterion of rightness / decision procedure distinction roughly maps to what I’m pointing at, but I think it’s important to note that Act Consequentialism doesn’t actually give a full decision procedure. It doesn’t come with free answers to things like ‘how long should you spend on making a decision’ or ‘what kinds of decisions should you be doing this for’, nor answers to questions like ‘how many layers of meta should you go up’. And I am concerned that in the absence of clear answers to these questions, people will often naively opt for bad answers.
Fwiw, I think the usage from moral philosophy is by far the most common outside the EA community, and probably also inside the community. So if someone uses the word “consequentialism”, I would normally assume (often unthinkingly) that they’re using it in that sense. I think that means that those who use it in any other sense should, in many contexts, be particularly careful to make clear that they’re not using the term in that way.
There is a standard distinction in ethics between act consequentialism as a criterion of rightness and as a decision procedure (see Amanda Askell’s post). Potentially that maps on to “ethical consequentialism” and “explicit consequence analysis”, depending on what you have in mind.
I certainly agree that outside EA, consequentialism just means the moral philosophy. But inside I feel like I keep seeing people use it to mean this process of decision-making, enough that I want to plant this flag.
I agree that the criterion of rightness / decision procedure distinction roughly maps to what I’m pointing at, but I think it’s important to note that Act Consequentialism doesn’t actually give a full decision procedure. It doesn’t come with free answers to things like ‘how long should you spend on making a decision’ or ‘what kinds of decisions should you be doing this for’, nor answers to questions like ‘how many layers of meta should you go up’. And I am concerned that in the absence of clear answers to these questions, people will often naively opt for bad answers.