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steven0461 comments on My main problem with utilitarianism - Less Wrong
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This is confusing the issue. Utility, which is an abstract thing measuring preference satisfaction, is not the same thing as happiness, which is a psychological state.
It's a pretty universal confusion. Many people when asked what they want out of life will say something like 'to be happy'. I suspect that they do not exactly mean 'to be permanently in the psychological state we call happiness' though, but something more like, 'to satisfy my preferences, which includes, but is not identical with, being in the psychological state of happiness more often than not'. I actually think a lot of ethics gets itself tied up in knots because we don't really understand what we mean when we say we want to be happy.
True, but even so, thinking about utilon-seconds probably does steer your thoughts in a different direction from thinking about utility.
So let's call them hedon-seconds instead.
The terminology here is kind of catching me in between a rock and a hard place.
My entire point is that the "utility" of "utilitarianism" might need more complexity than the "utility" of economics, because if someone thinks they prefer a new toaster but they actually wouldn't be any happier with it, I don't place any importance on getting them a new toaster. IANAEBAFAIK economists' utility either would get them the new toaster or doesn't really consider this problem.
...but I also am afraid of straight out saying "Happiness!", because if you do that you're vulnerable to wireheading. Especially with a word like "hedon" which sounds like "hedonism", which is very different from the "happiness" I want to talk about.
CEV might help here, but I do need to think about it more.
Agreed. For clarity, the economist's utility is just preference sets, but these aren't stable. Morality's utility is what those preference sets would look like if they reflected what we would actually value, given that we take everything into account. I.e., Eliezer's big computation. Utilitarianism's utility, in the sense that Eliezer is a utilitarian, is the terms of the implied utility function we have (i.e., the big computation) that refers to the utility functions of other agents.
Using "utility" to refer to all of these things is confusing. I choose to call economist's utility functions preference sets, for clarity. And, thus, economic actors maximize preferences, but not necessarily utility. Perhaps utilitarianism's utility - the terms in our utility function for the values of other people - can be called altruistic utility, again, for clarity.
ETA: and happiness I use to refer to a psychological state - a feeling. Happiness, then, is nice, but I don't want to be happy unless it's appropriate to be happy. Your mileage may vary with this terminology, but it helps me keep things straight.
My rough impression is that "utilitarianism" is generally taken to mean either hedonistic or preference utilitarianism, but nothing else, and that we should be saying "consequentialism".
I think the "big computation" perspective in The Meaning of Right is sufficient.
Or if you're just looking for a term to use instead of "utility" or "happiness", how about "goodness" or "the good"? (Edit: "value", as steven suggests, is better.)
My impression is that it doesn't need to be pleasure or preference satisfaction; it can be anything that could be seen as "quality of life" or having one's true "interests" satisfied.
Or "value".
I agree we should care about more than people's economic utility and more than people's pleasure.
"eudaimon-seconds", maybe?