"Optimal" by what value? Since we don't have an objective morality here, a person only has their Wants (whether moral or not) to decide what counts as optimal. This leads to problems. Take a Hypothetical Case A.
-In Case A there are several options. One option would be the best from a consequentialist perspective, taking all consequences into accont. However, taking this option would make the option's taker not only feel very guilty (for whatever reason- there are plenty of possibilities) but harm their selfish interests in the long run.
This is an extreme case, but it shows the problem at it's worst. Elizier would say that doing the consequentialist thing would be the Right thing to do. However, he cannot have any compelling reason to do it based on his reasons for morality- an innate desire to act that way being the only reason he has for it.
"Optimal" by what value?
Well, I intended it in the minimal sense of "maximizing an optimization problem", if the moral quandary could be seen in that way. I was not asserting that consequentialism is the optimal way to find a solution to a moral problem, I stated that it seems to me that consequentialism is the only way to find an optimal solution to a moral problem that our previous morality cannot cover.
...Since we don't have an objective morality here, a person only has their Wants (whether moral or not) to decide what counts as op
My apologies if this doesn't deserve a Discussion post, but if this hasn't been addresed anywhere than it's clearly an important issue.
There have been many defences of consequentialism against deontology, including quite a few on this site. What I haven't seen, however, is any demonstration of how deontology is incompatible with the ideas in Elizier's Metaethics sequence- as far as I can tell, a deontologist could agree with just about everything in the Sequences.
Said deontologist would argue that, to the extent a human universial morality can exist through generalised moral instincts, said instincts tend to be deontological (as supported through scientific studies- a study of the trolley dilemna v.s the 'fat man' variant showed that people would divert the trolley but not push the fat man). This would be their argument against the consequentialist, who they could accuse of wanting a consequentialist system and ignoring the moral instincts at the basis of their own speculations.
I'm not completely sure about this, but figure it an important enough misunderstanding if I indeed misunderstood to deserve clearing up.