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pjeby comments on Virtue Ethics for Consequentialists - Less Wrong
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Consequences of non-consequentialism are disastrous. Just look at charity - instead of trying to get most good-per-buck people donate because this "make them a better person" or "is the right thing to do" - essentially throwing this all away.
If we got our act together, and did the most basic consequentialist thing of establishing monetary value per death and suffering prevented, the world would immediately become a far less sucky place to live than it is now.
This world is so filled with low hanging fruits we're not taking only because of backwards morality it's not even funny.
Er, by your values, maybe. They could just as easily argue that good-per-buck reasoning reduces the amount of love and charity in everyone's life, making the world an experientially poorer place, and that there's more to life than practical consequences.
I think you'd need to be specific about your definitions for 'practical' and 'consequences' to argue for that. I think in hereabouts parlance, you're saying something like "Your utility function might put a higher value on 'love' and 'charity' than on strangers' lives". Which would be a harder bullet to bite.
I was saying that "they could just as easily argue" -- ie. I was using the terms that those people would use.
But that is an appeal to practical consequences.