Perhaps one of the most frequent criticisms of utilitarianism is the fact that utilitarians tend to be inconsistent. Naturally, we would mention that consistency has no inherent value, but I think it is necessary for utilitarians to grow beyond simple cost-benefit calculations and seek to include considerations such as "am I being consistent?"

I'm sure we are all aware that hypocrisy and all sorts of other seemingly inconsistent actions that could be motivated by utilitarian concerns have costs themselves. Perhaps this inconsistency could cause others to become cynical and lose trust in you and the world, reducing social capital as well as your future effectiveness.

Additionally, because of the nature of human beings, the means have a way of becoming confused for the ends as they become routinized.

I am reminded of Marxists who in trying to create a classless, stateless, and directly democratic world decided they needed a "temporary" dictatorship of the proletariat. Considering the authoritarian structure of the Bolshevik party and other Marxist political parties, it should be rather obvious in hindsight why Stalin rose up.

Thus, to reinforce the norms which you would like to see, you must actually practice them to the best of your ability. As Gandhi would say, "Be the change you want to see in the world."

On the other hand, consistency is an impossible goal, and perhaps not even a desirable one, but I do think that all else being equal it matters. This is one of the many delicate balancing acts of the human condition.

We consistently do what creates the highest expected utility.

Do you have an example of this inconsistency? I don't know exactly what you're referring to.

I suppose we might look inconsistent to a deontologist as what rights and duties we believe in would appear to change, but this is a red herring. We don't believe in any rights or duties.

I definitely agree that utilitarians are (in theory) fundamentally consistent from a philosophical perspective, which is why I made the disclaimer "seemingly inconsistent" when referring to actions utilitarians might do, such as engaging in hypocrisy.

Nevertheless, since most people are not utilitarians, they will not recognize the actions as part of a consistent ethical framework. My friends have personally commented on this fact to me as a reason for their distaste of utilitarianism, and thus it is something we must seriously address.

Also, I recently saw this mentioned explicitly in the first comment on this post.

(By the way, Daniel, it would serve you well to read that post.)

I don't think being "consistent" is worth while. I suggest pointing out that nobody is. For example, from the article you linked to "utilitarianism is morally flawed—you could justify all sorts of horrible policies, including legalized theft, this way". I suppose I can't assume he's not an anarchist, but the vast majority of the people reading that consider taxes a good thing. Granted, they want them to be lower, but taxes in any amount are legalized theft. Thus, he is every bit as inconsistent as he claims us to be.

Well, my days of seeing Stephan Kinsella as an ideologue are certainly coming to a middle. (w/ apologies to Mal Reynolds)

Anyway, I have a more fundamental problem than Daniel's with not being inconsistent, in that I'm not sure what being inconsistent is supposed to mean. Obviously it's not possible to be logically inconsistent, so what people usually mean is 'you do this thing, which I see as analagous to this other thing which you don't do.' But such analogies are entirely personal, and will differ from one person to the next.

One example I've suffered is people saying that because I don't eat meat, I shouldn't wear leather shoes - even if they were bought before I turned vegetarian. Similarly, people often find it hard to swallow that I will actually eat leftover meat iff it's going to be thrown away. It's inconsistent from one vantage point, but that's not my vantage point, and nor is it usually theirs. If they believe the logic 'you either eat meat or you don't' maxim they seem to be advocating, they would be inconsistent in sometimes eating things that aren't meat. Or even in just sometimes not consuming meat all day every day. IMO these are just silly power games used by people seeking to put you on the defensive.

More broadly, there's a question of how much we might think it advisable to adjust our behaviour in order to make consequentialism more appealing to fence-sitters and sympathisers. The most plausible answer to me is we should be much more willing to do so in our public actions than our day-to-day life. I've been trying hard to persuade Alan not to give all his donations to the SIAI - partly because I think he's heavily overrating their direct effectiveness, and partly because he's never going to inspire the public with such activities as much as he might by finding obviously effective charities with obviously probable benefits (rather than just supposedly high expected ones).

In my day to day life, I'd prefer to continue my own utilitarian vegetarianism. If people dismiss me as being inconsistent they probably weren't ever going to be interested in my ethics anyway. Meanwhile, if they are, then I might just be consciousness-raising.

The definition you gave for 'inconsistency' is basically what I was getting at. I just mean that it is important to appear ethically consistent in the eyes of others, even if the things they are concerned with are unimportant to you personally.

That is an ok argument regarding the freegan-style meat-eating, Arepo, though for people whom you interact with more often, you do not want them thinking you will eat meat under any circumstances, because they will consciously or subconsciously think you will be eating it and perhaps purchase more meat than they otherwise would during meals which you have together.

For people who you don't expect to be dining with in the future, your argument makes more sense, as long as the opportunity to explain yourself actually does arise. Some people may just be silently judgmental. Additionally, you risk giving the impression that being a vegan is difficult and thus make it slightly less likely that others will adopt veganism.

A good example of the where differing perspectives creates confusions regarding ethical consistency is when those on the Right ask "how can you say you are for peace when you support the murder of innocent babies," and when people on the Left ask "how can you say you are pro-life when you are pro-war, pro-death penalty, and opposed to universal healthcare."

This is partly a philosophical difference and partly and semantic one. Life and death actually mean different things to them. The term 'life' and even the term 'human being' are just biological classifications, and we use the term "life" for everything from a prokaryote to a zebra, and clearly not all life is equivalent, and indeed not all creatures in the category "homo sapien" are morally significant, because not all have qualia (brain dead people, embryos, etc). Yet we often use the terms as a shorthand for "morally significant entity," which creates yet more confusion.

In this case, compromising on the abortion issue, considering the massive utility at stake, would be a bad move if there were little to be gained beyond appearing consistent. Though finding ways of avoiding the issue in order to appear consistent might be useful.

In cases where the utility is lower, such as your choice of shoes, the need to appear consistent in the eyes of others might legitimately override other considerations. I too still have some leather shoes from days of yor. I haven't received any comments though, but maybe that is because my friends aren't that perceptive. I am still thinking about what to do about this, since I don't even like the shoes.

But people will see inconsistency whatever we do. The basis of the distinction between util and other ethics is its rejection of arbitrarily selected groups of action that we apply separate rules to.

If we start going out of our way to avoid actions that Kantians et al might see as wrong, not only will we compromise our own activities, but we'll make ourselves less visible as a group. I would rather people were more aware of us, and given more opportunities to air criticisms which we can then refute. If they're reasonably intelligent and we're as right as we think we are, that seems like it can only be a good thing. I don't see the value in acting to please people who can't get past simple logical fallacies. Let's worry about mass appeal when we've got a national TV channel...

You convinced me regarding those whom you have an opportunity to explain yourself to, but appearing consistent still matters, albeit only marginally, for those whom you cannot explain yourself to. I agree it isn't something we should obsess over.