ikrase comments on Privileging the Question - Less Wrong

102 Post author: Qiaochu_Yuan 29 April 2013 06:30PM

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Comment author: NancyLebovitz 01 May 2013 05:47:21AM 1 point [-]

Utilitarians who choose to draw the line around the whole of the human race do so because they believe they aught to value the whole of the human race.

Is that a deontological standard?

The reason I asked is that, in principle, you could have utilitarianism based on some group smaller than the human race.

Comment author: ikrase 01 May 2013 06:30:34AM 0 points [-]

Ummmmm... do I draw the line around the whole of the human race? I'm not sure whether I do or not. I do know that there is a certain boundary (defined mostly by culture) where I get much more likely to say 'that's your problem' and become much less skeptical/cynical about preferences, although issues that seem truly serious always get the same treatment.

For some reason, choosing to accept that somebody's utility function might be very different from your own feels kind of like abandoning them from the inside. (Subjective!).