Nick_Tarleton comments on My main problem with utilitarianism - Less Wrong

-2 Post author: taw 17 April 2009 08:26PM

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Comment author: Nick_Tarleton 17 April 2009 09:42:26PM *  3 points [-]

Not at all. We're all just trying to maximize our own utilions. My utility function has a term int it for other people's happiness. Maybe it has a term for other people's utilions (I'm not sure about that one though). But when I say I want to maximize utility, I'm just maximizing one utility function: mine. Consideration for others is already factored in.

Seconded. It seems to me that what's universally accepted is that rationality is maximizing some utility function, which might not be the sum/average of happiness/preference-satisfaction of individuals. I don't know if there's a commonly-used term for this. "Consequentialism" is close and is probably preferable to "utilitarianism", but seems to actually be a superset of the view I'm referring to, including things like rule-consequentialism.