In general, the ethical theory that prevails here on Less Wrong is preference utilitarianism.
What is your evidence for this? In The Preference Utilitarian’s Time Inconsistency Problem, the top voted comments didn't try to solve the problem posed for preference utilitarians, but instead made general arguments against preference utilitarianism.
The real answer to torture vs. dust specks is to recognize that the answer to the scenario is torture, but the scenario itself has a prior probability so astronomically low that no evidence could ever convince you that you were in it, since at most k/3^^^3 people can affect the fate of 3^^^3 people at once (where k is the number of times a person's fate is affected). However, there are higher-probability scenarios that look like torture vs. 3^^^3 dust specks, but are actually torture vs. nothing or torture vs. not-enough-specks-to-care. In philosophical pr...
I've been thinking about this on and off for half a year or so, and I have come to the conclusion that I cannot agree with any proposed moral system that answers "torture" to dust specks and torture. If this means my morality is scope-insensitive, then so be it.
(I don't think it is; I just don't think utilitarianism with an aggregation function of summation over all individuals is correct; I think the correct aggregation function should probably be different. I am not sure what the correct aggregation function is, but maximizing the minimum ind...
I think Torture vs Dust Specks makes a hidden assumption that the two things are comparable. It appears that people don't actually think like that; even an infinite amount of dust specks are worse than a single person being tortured or dying. People arbitrarily place some bad things into a category that's infinitely worse than another category.
So, I'd say that you aren't preferring morality; you are simply placing 50 years of torture as infinitely worse than a dust speck; no number people getting dust specks can possibly be worse than 50 years of torture.
Really? Preference utilitarianism prevails on Less Wrong? I haven't been around too long, but I would have guessed that moral anti-realism (in several forms) prevailed.
Isn't this a confusion of levels, with preference utilitarianism being an ethical theory, and moral anti-realism being a metaethical theory?
Namely, do other people's moral intuitions constitute a preference that we should factor into a utilitarian calculation?
If we feel like it. I personally would say yes. What would you say?
I find it impossible to engage thoughtfully with philosophical questions about morality because I remain unconvinced of the soundness of the first principles that are applied in moral judgments. I am not interested in a moral claim that does not have a basis in some fundamental idea with demonstrable validity. I will try to contain my critique to those claims that do attempt at least what I think to be this basic level of intellectual rigor.
Note 1: I recognize that I introduced many terms in the above statement that are open to challenge as loaded and...
I would predict, based on human nature, that a if the 3^^^3 people were asked if they wanted to inflict a dust speck in each one of their eyes, in exchange for not torturing another individual for 50 years, they would probably vote for dust specks.
Each one with probability of order 1/3^^^3? Well that's what I call overconfidence.
I think the answer is that morality has to be counted, but we also have to count changes to morality. If moral preferences were entirely a matter of intellectual commitment, this might lead to double counting, but in fact people really do experience pride, guilt, and so on - and I doubt that morality could have any effect on their behavior if it didn't.
Counting the changes to morality can cut both ways. For instance: some people have a strong inclination to have sex with people of the same sex, while many people (sometimes the same ones) are deeply morally...
I would predict, based on human nature, that a if the 3^^^3 people were asked if they wanted to inflict a dust speck in each one of their eyes, in exchange for not torturing another individual for 50 years, they would probably vote for dust specks.
I think you've nailed my problem with this scenario: anyone who wouldn't go for this, I would be disinclined to listen to.
I think we might still be talking past each other, but here goes:
The reason I posit and emphasize a distinction between subjective judgments and those that are otherwise -- I have a weak reason for not using the term "objective" here -- is to highlight a particular feature of moral claims that is lacking, and in thus being lacked, weakens them. That is, I take a claim to be subjective if to hold it myself I must come upon it by chance. I cannot be brought to it through reason alone. It is an opinion or intuition that I cannot trace logically in my own thought, so I cannot communicate it to you by guiding you down the same line. The reason I think that this distinction matters, is that without this logical structure, it not possible for someone to bring me to experience the same intuition through reasoned argument or demonstration. Without this feature, morality must be an island state. This is ruinous, because morality inevitably and necessarily touches upon interactions between people. If it cannot do this, it cannot do much.
Perhaps we should come to common agreement, are at least agreed-upon disagreement on this point before we try other things.
Other Things:
I suspect -- this is an idea I have only recently invented have not entirely examined -- that any idea that is irrational needs must be essentially incommunicable. How could it be otherwise? If you can lay out the logic behind a thought and give support to its predicates carefully and patiently, and of course your logic is valid and your predicates sound, how can I not, if I am open to reason, not accept what you say as true? That is, if you can demonstrate your ideas as the logical consequences of some set of known truths, I must, because that is what logical consequence is, accept your ideas as true.
I have not witnessed with done with moral notions. Hence my doubt about there existence as rational ideas. I do not doubt that people have moral ideas, but I doubt that they can be communicated to people who have not already come upon them by chance, and who then can only be partially sure that you are of common mind.
Perhaps I can draw a parallel with the distinction between Greek and Babylonian mathematics. The difference between demonstration by proof and attempted demonstration by repeated example. The first (except to mathematicians of the subtle variety), if done properly, seems to be able, in its nature, to be powered to accomplish the goal of communication in every case. Can this be said of the latter type? I think only in the case when the examples given are logically structured so as to be a form of the first type.
"I agree with your basic point that moral intuitions reflect psychological realities, and that attempts to derive moral truths without explicitly referring to those realities will inevitably turn out to implicitly embed them."
I have not wanted to make this claim. What I am claiming is that this claim does appear, thus far, to hold water. However, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, etc. etc. I am asking for someone to show me the light, as it were.
"First, I can have moral intuitions about non-humans... for example, I can believe that it's wrong to club cute widdle baby seals. Second, it's not obvious that non-humans can't have moral intuitions."
As for your first objection, have not you given precisely the sort of case I was talking about? The moral judgment stated is not about bears clubbing baby seals, it is about humans doing it! Clearly that does involve humans. Come up with a moral judgment about trees overusing carbon dioxide and you'll have me pinned.
"If that is in fact your desire, then you haven't a care for it. Or, indeed, for much of anything else."
That is just silly, is it not? I must at least care for reason itself. The desire to be rational is a passion indeed. If I must be paradoxical at least that far, I will take it and move on. As for your love of pie, if it is really a consequence of your biology and history, then you CANNOT give it up. You cannot will yourself to unlove it, or it must thus not be the product of the aforesaid forces alone.
I am fairly sure that we aren't talking past each other, I just disagree with you on some points. Just to try and clarify those points...
You seem to believe that a moral theory must, first and foremost, be compelling... if moral theory X does not convince others, then it can't do much worth doing. I am not convinced of this. For example, working out my own moral theory in detail allows me to recognize situations that present moral choices, and identify the moral choices I endorse, more accurately... which lowers my chances of doing things that, if I unde
In general, the ethical theory that prevails here on Less Wrong is preference utilitarianism. The fundamental idea is that the correct moral action is the one that satisfies the strongest preferences of the most people. Preferences are discussed with units such as fun, pain, death, torture, etc. One of the biggest dilemmas posed on this site is the Torture vs. Dust Specks problem. I should say, up front, that I would go with dust specks, for some of the reasons I mentioned here. I mention this because it may be biasing my judgments about my question here.
I had a thought recently about another aspect of Torture vs. Dust Specks, and wanted to submit it to some Less Wrong Discussion. Namely, do other people's moral intuitions constitute a preference that we should factor into a utilitarian calculation? I would predict, based on human nature, that a if the 3^^^3 people were asked if they wanted to inflict a dust speck in each one of their eyes, in exchange for not torturing another individual for 50 years, they would probably vote for dust specks.
Should we assign weight to other people's moral intuitions, and how much weight should it have?