Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on On dollars, utility, and crack cocaine - Less Wrong

13 Post author: PhilGoetz 04 April 2009 12:00AM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 April 2009 11:41:59AM 2 points [-]

IAWYC but "consequentialism" of itself, or "materialism" of itself, doesn't stop us from having such a utility function.

Comment author: ciphergoth 04 April 2009 12:36:09PM 1 point [-]

Do you know if this is a well-known position in consequentialist philosophy? It seems like it must be, but I only got as far as the Wikipedia page on deserts and it seems to cover a discussion among deontologists,,,

Comment author: conchis 04 April 2009 12:59:01PM *  4 points [-]

There's a fair amount of debate about what exactly the formalism of consequentialism excludes or doesn't, and whether it's possible to view deontological views (or indeed any other moral theory) as a subset of consequentialism. The idea that any moral view can be seen as a version of consequentlialism is often referred to as "Dreier's conjecture" (see e.g. the discussion here.)

Usually, consequentialist aggregration functions impose an anonymity requirement, which seems to discourage desert as a consideration (it requires that the identity of individuals can't matter to what they get). But even that doesn't really exclude it.