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lukeprog comments on The Urgent Meta-Ethics of Friendly Artificial Intelligence - Less Wrong
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utilitymonster,
For the record, as a good old Humean I'm currently an internalist about reasons, which leaves me unable (I think) to endorse any form of utilitarianism, where utilitarianism is the view that we ought to maximize X. Why? Because internal reasons don't always, and perhaps rarely, support maximizing X, and I don't think external reasons for maximizing X exist. For example, I don't think X has intrinsic value (in Korsgaard's sense of "intrinsic value").
Thanks for the link to that paper on rational choice theories and decision theories!
So are categorical reasons any worse off than categorical oughts?
Categorical oughts and reasons have always confused me. What do you see as the difference, and which type of each are you thinking of? The types of categorical reasons or reasons with which I'm most familiar are Kant's and Korsgaard's.
R is a categorical reason for S to do A iff R counts in favor doing A for S, and would so count for other agents in a similar situation, regardless of their preferences. If it were true that we always have reasons to benefit others, regardless of what we care about, that would be a categorical reason. I don't use the term "categorical reason" any differently than "external reason".
S categorically ought to do A just when S ought to do A, regardless of what S cares about, and it would still be true that S ought to do A in similar situations, regardless of what S cares about. The rule: always maximize happiness, would, if true, ground a categorical ought.
I see very little reason to be more or less skeptical of categorical reasons or categorical oughts than the other.
Agreed. And I'm skeptical of both. You?
Hard to be confident about these things, but I don't see the problem with external reasons/oughts. Some people seem to have some kind of metaphysical worry...harder to reduce or something. I don't see it.