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Peterdjones comments on Pluralistic Moral Reductionism - Less Wrong
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I miss the discussion (on LW in general) of an approach to ethics that strives to determine what actions should be unlawful for an agent, as opposed to, say, what probability distribution over actions is optimal for an agent. (And I don't mean "deontologic", as the "unlawfulness" can be predicated on the consequences.) If you criticize this comment for confusion of "descriptive ethics vs. normative ethics vs. metaethics", try to be constructive.
Please explain why you think there should be more of that on LW.
My answer to that question is that it what morality is actually about, and that personal preference-optimisation is something else.
I don't think Luke, at least, is conflating morality with personal preference-optimization. He's saying: Different people have different notions of "should"-ness, and if someone says "What should I do?" then giving them a good answer has to begin with working out what notion of "should" they're working with. That applies whether "should" is being used morally or prudentially or both.
Also: What makes a moral agent a moral agent is having personal preferences that give substantial weight to moral considerations. And what such an agent is actually deciding, on any given occasion, is what serves his/her/its goals best: it's just that among the important goals are things like "doing what is right" and "not doing what is wrong". So, actually, for a moral agent "personal preference-optimization" will sometimes involve a great deal of "what morality is actually about".
There's an important difference between saying preferences may or may not include moral values, and saying morality is, by definition, preference-maximiisation.
Yup, there is. Did anyone say that morality is, by definition, preference-maximization?
Yes.
Do please feel free to provide more information.