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Bugmaster comments on Open Thread: December 2011 - Less Wrong
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Oh... so does Utilitarianism(Ethical Theory) actually prescribe a specific utility function ? If so, how is the function derived ? As I said, my understanding of moral theories is a bit shaky, sorry about that.
When Utilitarianism was proposed, Mill/Bentham identified it as basically "pleasure good / pain bad". Since then, Utilitarianism has pretty much become a family of theories, largely differentiated by their conceptions of the good.
One common factor of ethical theories called "Utilitarianism" is that they tend to be agent-neutral; thus, one would not talk about "an agent's utility function", but "overall net utility" (a dubious concept).
"Consequentialism" only slightly more generally refers to a family of ethical theories that consider the consequences of actions to be the only consideration for morality.
Thanks, that clears things up. But, as you said, "overall net utility" is kind of a dubious concept. I suspect that no one had figured out a way yet to compute this utility function in a semi-objective way... is that right ?