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cousin_it comments on Normativity and Meta-Philosophy - Less Wrong
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Comments (55)
If we try to translate sentences involving "should" into descriptive sentences about the world, they will probably sound like "action A increases the value of utility function U". If I was a consistent utility maximizer, and U was my utility function, then believing such a statement would make me take action A. No further verbal convincing would be necessary.
Since we are not consistent utility maximizers, we run an approximate implementation of that mechanism which is vulnerable to verbal manipulation, often by sentences involving "should". So the murkiness in the meaning of "should" is proportional to the difference between us and utility maximizers. Does that make sense?
(It may or may not be productive to describe a person as a utility maximizer plus error. But I'm going with that because we have no better theory yet.)
I agree that all "ought" statements can be easily translated into "is" statements about maximizing some utility function. But in practice, should-statements often are disguised exhortations to adopt a particular utility function.
I think the question raised by the OP is something like: Why we should take the exhortation seriously if we have not already adopted the particular utility function?
If agents have different utility functions / conative ambitions / "shoulds", they will presumably need to engage in some kind of negotiation in order to compromise their values and reach an efficient outcome. Presumably, ethical disputes can function as a way of reaching such outcomes - some accounts of ethics are quite clear in describing ethical reasoning as being very much about such a balancing of "right versus right". Even Kantian ethics can be seen in such terms, although what we woud call "rights" Kant would perhaps refer to as "principles of practical reason".
One could try to create a model of agents that respond to such exhortations. Maybe such agents could be uncertain about their own utility function, like in Dewey's value learning paper.
Your comment implies that sentences making reference to utility functions are sentences about the world. Do you mean to say that "action A increases the value of utility function U" involves no normative content, that it is purely a description of a state of affairs?
Is there a theory of normativity that claims that normative content does not reduce to states of affairs?
EDIT: Well of course there would be, under section 3 of the OP's link. Unfortunately, I could use help dissecting language such as:
means Moore thinks you can't reduce 'ought' claims to 'is' claims, roughly.
means that Moore thinks that you have access to informative moral truths (like 'it is wrong to kill wontonly' and not just 'murder is illegal homocide') in such a way that doesn't make reference to any particular experiences or contingent facts about the world. So Moore thinks that you can know 'it is wrong to kill wontonly'' independently of knowing any of the specific facts about human beings or human societies or anything like that.
But right, non-naturalism is a possibility for normative theories (and not a particularly unusual one, since all Kantians would count as non-naturalists). I'm not a non-naturalist myself, but I suspect cousin isn't getting away with eliminating the 'ought' in referring to utility functions, but just hiding it in the utility function. But I'm not well versed in that sort of thing, so I don't think I'm quite entitled to the criticism.
As you know, there is no commonly agreed upon way of stating "action A increases the value of utility function U" as math (otherwise decision theory would be solved). Given that, what does it mean when I say "I think we should express 'action A increases the value of utility function U' in math as X", which seems like a sensible statement? I don't see how the "should" in this sentence can be translated into something that sounds like "action A increases the value of utility function U" without making the sentence mean something obviously different.
I think it makes sense as a statement about decision theories. How would a choice of which mathematical expression of 'action A increases the value of utility function U' affect actual utility? Only by affecting which actions are chosen; in other words by selecting a particular (class of) decision theory which maximizes utility due in part to its expression of what "should" means mathematically.
So you're saying we need to mathematically model our desire for a mathematical model of X? :-) That might be a line of attack, but I don't yet see what it gives us, compared to attacking the problem directly...
I read
to mean (1:) "the utility function U increases in value from action A". Did you mean (2:) "under utility function U, action A increases (expected) value"? Or am I missing some distinction in terminology?
The alternative meaning (2) leads to "should" (much like "ought") being dependent on the utility function used. Normativity might suggest that we all share views on utility that have fundamental similarities. In my mind at least, the usual controversy over whether utility functions (and derivative moral claims, i.e., "should"s and "ought"s) can be objectively true, remains.
Edit: formatting.