Thanks! I don’t have a great sense of how common the criticism I mentioned is, so maybe “common” was too strong. It does seem to be at least prominent enough to get discussed in the SEP article on consequentialism:
Furthermore, a utilitarian criterion of right implies that it would not be morally right to use the principle of utility as a decision procedure in cases where it would not maximize utility to try to calculate utilities before acting. [...] This move is supposed to make consequentialism self-refuting, according to some opponents.
But you’re probably right that some of the people who point to historical track records have non-consequentialist arguments in mind.
Thanks! I don’t have a great sense of how common the criticism I mentioned is, so maybe “common” was too strong. It does seem to be at least prominent enough to get discussed in the SEP article on consequentialism:
But you’re probably right that some of the people who point to historical track records have non-consequentialist arguments in mind.