A common response (although, one I cannot find an example of via the search feature, blah) I have observed from Less Wrongers to the challenge of interpersonal utility comparison is the claim that "we do it all the time". I take this to mean that when we make decisions we often consider the preferences of our friends and family (and sometimes strangers or enemies) and that whatever is going on in our minds when we do this approximates interpersonal utility calculations (in some objective sense). This, to me, seems like legerdemain for basically this reason:
...One stand restoring to utilitarianism its role of judging policy, is that interpersonal comparisons are obviously possible since we are making them all the time. Only if we denied "other minds" could we rule out comparisons between them. Everyday linguistic usage proves the logical legitimacy of such statements as "A is happier than B" (level-comparison) and, at a pinch, presumably also "A is happier than B but by less than B is happier than C" (difference-comparison). A degree of freedom is, however, left to interpretation, which vitiates this approach. For these everyday statements can,
The other day, I forgot my eyeglasses at home and while walking I got a good sized piece of dust or dirt lodged in my eye. My eye was incapacitated for the better part of a minute until tears washed it out. I had a bit of an epiphany: 3^^^3 dust specks suddenly seems a lot scarier, something you obviously need to agregate and assign a monstrous pile of disutility to. So Basically I have updated my position on torture vs specks.
I have a pill that will make you a psychopath. You will retain all your intellectual abilities and all understanding of moral theory, but your emotional reactions to others suffering will cease. You will still have the empathy to understand that others are suffering, but you won't feel automatic sympathy for it.
Do you want to take it?
I am having a discussion on reddit (I am TheMeiguoren), and I have a a moral quandry that I want to run by the community.
I'll highlight the main point (the context is a discussion about immortality):
...imbecile: For someone to have several lifetimes to be considered a good thing, it must be conclusively shown that this person improves the life of others more and faster than several other people could achieve in their lifetime together with the resources he has at his disposal.
me: If my existence really was harming the human race by not being as efficient a
I have a question: what is akrasia exactly?
Say I have to finish a paper, but I also enjoy wasting time on the internet. All things considered, I decide it would be better for me to finish the paper than for me to waste time on the internet. And yet I waste time on the internet. What's going on there? It can't just be a reflex or a tick: my reflexes aren't that sophisticated. Given how complicated wasting time on the internet is, and that I decidedly enjoy it, it looks like an intentional action, something which is the result of my reasoning. Yet I reasoned...
Summary: I'm wondering whether anyone (especially moral anti-realists) would disagree with the statement, "The utility of an agent can only depend on the mental state of that agent".
I have had little success In my attempts to devise a coherent moral realist theory of meta-ethics, and am no longer very sure that moral realism is true, but there is one statement about morality that seems clearly true to me. "The utility of an agent can only depend on the mental state of that agent". Call this statement S. By utility I roughly mean how goo...
Love - in increase in her utility causes an increase in your utility.
Hate - in increase in her utility causes a decrease in your utility.
Indifference - a change in her utility has no influence on your utility.
Love = good.
Hate = evil.
Indifference = how almost everyone feels towards almost everyone.
[...]and related-to-rationality enough to deserve its own thread.
I've gotten to thinking that morality and rationality are very, very isomorphic. The former seems to require the latter, and in my experience the latter gives rise to the former. So they may not even be completely distinguishable. We've got lots of commonalities between the two, noting that both are very difficult for humans due to our haphazard makeup, and both have imaginary Ideal versions (respectively: God, and the agent who only has true beliefs and optimal decisions and infinite comp...
Question: What is the definition of morality? What is morality? For what humans use this concept and what motivitates humans to better understand morality, whatever it is?
Look, if it helps, you can define utility*, which is utility that doesn't depend on anything outside the mental state of the agent, as opposed to utility**, which does. Then you can get frustrated at all these silly people who seem to mistakenly think they want to maximize their utility** instead of their utility*.
Someone can want to maximize utility**, and this is not necessarily irrational, but if they do this the are choosing to maximize something other than their own well-being.
Perhaps they are being altruistic and trying to improve someone else's well-being at the expense of their own, like in your torture example. In this example, I don't believe that most people who choose to save their family believe that they are maximizing their own well-being, I think they realize they are sacrificing their well-being (by maximizing utility** instead of utility*) in order to increase the well-being of their family members. I think that any one who does believe they are maximizing their own well being when saving their family is mistaken.
Perhaps they do not have any legitimate reason for wanting something other than their own well-being. Going back to the gold cube example, think of why P wants the cube to exist. P could want it to exist because knowing that gold cubes exist makes them happy. If this is the only reason, then P would probably be perfectly happy to accept a deal where their mind is altered so that they know the cube exists, even though it does not. If, however, P thinks there is something "good" about the cube existing, independent of their mind, they would (probably) not take this deal. Both of these actions are perfectly rational, given P's beliefs about morality, but in the second case, P is mistaken in thinking that the existence of the cube is good by itself. This is because in either case, after accepting the deal, P's mental state is exactly the same, so P's well-being must be exactly the same. Further, nothing else in this universe is morally relevant, and P was simply mistaken in thinking that the existence of the gold block was a fundamentally good thing. (There might be other reasons for P to want the cube. Perhaps P just has an inexplicable urge for there to be a cube. in this case it is unclear whether they would take the deal, but taking it would surely still increase their well-being)
Well, again, you're kind of just asserting your claim. Prima facie, it seems pretty plausible that whatever function evaluates how well off a person is could take into account things outside of their mental states.
It seems implausible to me that this function could exist independent of a mind or outside of a mind. You seem to be claiming that two people with identical mental states could have different levels of well-being. This seems absurd to me. I realize I am not provide much of an argument for this claim, but the idea that someone's well-being could depend upon something that has no connection with their mental states whatsoever strongly violates my moral intuitions. I expected that other people would share this intuition, but so far no one has said that they do, so perhaps this intuition is unusual. (One could argue that P is correct in believing that the cube has moral value/utility independent of any sentient being, but this seems even more absurd)
In any case, I think S is basically equivalent to saying that utility (or moral value, however you want to define it) reduces to mental states.
P.S. I think you quoted more than you meant to above.
Okay, I just think you seem to have some pretty radically different intuitions about what counts for someone's well-being.
One other thing: you seem to be assuming that the only reasons someone can have to act are either
I think this isn't true, and it's especially not true if you're defining well-being as you are. So you present the options for P as
but these aren't exhaust...
I figure morality as a topic is popular enough and important enough and related-to-rationality enough to deserve its own thread.
Questions, comments, rants, links, whatever are all welcome. If you're like me you've probably been aching to share your ten paragraph take on meta-ethics or whatever for about three uncountable eons now. Here's your chance.
I recommend reading Wikipedia's article on meta-ethics before jumping into the fray, if only to get familiar with the standard terminology. The standard terminology is often abused. This makes some people sad. Please don't make those people sad.