Diacritica 25-2_Filosofia.indb - cehum - Universidade do Minho

ELITISM AND THE ETHICS OF VIRTUE
VEE puts thus the non-practically wise person into the opposite position
with, for example, a non-expert consequentialist, who, despite his
imperfect ability to see the consequences of actions, has a good reason to
attempt to see who is an expert in seeing the consequences. Unlike VE that
regards virtue – standards of which are the most accessible for us through
the insight of the practically wise – as the source of ethical value, consequentialism
maintains that there is one, universally accessible principle
against which anyone can evaluate the ethical quality of virtually anything.
Th e expert consequentialists are simply those who have proven to produce
the most goodness overall. Since consequentialism tends to defi ne the good
in a subjective way – e.g. by equating one’s good with the satisfaction of her
subjective needs – it may be presumed that if a non-expert consequentialist
would recognise whether her own needs are suffi ciently satisfi ed or not with
n probability, even the best experts would recognise that with probability