PhilGoetz comments on My main problem with utilitarianism - Less Wrong

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

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Comment author: PhilGoetz 20 April 2009 02:57:12PM *  0 points [-]

The point is that the extent to which people's preferences are satisfied is just as objective a property of a situation as the amount of complexity present.

The preferences can be anything. If I claim that complexity should be one of the preferences, for me and for everyone, that's an objective claim - "objective" in the sense "claiming an objective value valid for all observers, rather than a subjective value that they can choose arbitrarily". It's practically religious. It's radically different from saying "people satisfy their preferences".

"The extent to which people's preferences are satisfied" is an objective property of a situation. But that has nothing to do with what I said; it's using a different meaning of the word "objective".