... Oh. Actually, on reading what you wrote over again, I think (in the last section, the points about ambition still stand) we are arguing over different things, and are more in agreement then we thought. You say you value "identity over utility" (to some extent). I think I interpreted that to mean something subtly different from what you meant.
By utility, you meant total utility of everyone (or maybe the average utility of everyone?) Realizing that, of course we value lots of things over "utility", when "utility" is used in that sense. (I will call it ToAU, for "Total or Average Utility", to avoid confusing it with what I will call MPU, "My Personal Utility".)
Yess, what you make is a good point that ToAU is not what we should be maximizing. I agree. I was arguing that it is nonsensical to not value utility, as by definition, MPU is what we should be maximizing. (Ok, put aside for now, as before, that me and you may have slightly different goal systems and I so I should be using a different pronoun, either you, if I am talking about what you are maximising, or me, if we are talking about me.)
Now, MPU is quite the complex function, and for us, at least, it includes terms for art and science existing, for humans not being killed, for minimizing not only our (mine, your) personal suffering, but also for minimising global suffering. Altruism is a major part of MPU, make no mistake, I am not arguing that others' opinions do not matter, at least for some value of "others", definitely including all humans, and likely including many non humans. MPU does include a term for the enjoyment, happiness, identity, non-suffering, and so forth of those in this category, but (as you have shown) this category cannot be completely universal.
In fact, in the end, all this boils down to is that you were arguing against utilitarianism, while I was arguing for consequentialism, two very similar ethical systems, but profoundly different.
I was arguing that it is nonsensical to not value utility, as by definition, MPU is what we should be maximizing.
Sorry, I tend to carelessly use the word "utility" to mean "the stuff utilitarians want to maximize," forgetting that many people will read it as "Von Neuman-Morgenstern Utility." You actually aren't the first person on Less Wrong I've done this to.
In fact, in the end, all this boils down to is that you were arguing against utilitarianism, while I was arguing for consequentialism, two very similar ethical systems, but profoundly different.
I agree entirely.
When someone complains that utilitarianism1 leads to the dust speck paradox or the trolley-car problem, I tell them that's a feature, not a bug. I'm not ready to say that respecting the utility monster is also a feature of utilitarianism, but it is what most people everywhere have always done. A model that doesn't allow for utility monsters can't model human behavior, and certainly shouldn't provoke indignant responses from philosophers who keep right on respecting their own utility monsters.
The utility monster is a creature that is somehow more capable of experiencing pleasure (or positive utility) than all others combined. Most people consider sacrificing everyone else's small utilities for the benefits of this monster to be repugnant.
Let's suppose the utility monster is a utility monster because it has a more highly-developed brain capable of making finer discriminations, higher-level abstractions, and more associations than all the lesser minds around it. Does that make it less repugnant? (If so, I lose you here. I invite you to post a comment explaining why utility-monster-by-smartness is an exception.) Suppose we have one utility monster and one million others. Everything we do, we do for the one utility monster. Repugnant?
Multiply by nine billion. We now have nine billion utility monsters and 9x1015 others. Still repugnant?
Yet these same enlightened, democratic societies whose philosophers decry the utility monster give approximately zero weight to the well-being of non-humans. We might try not to drive a species extinct, but when contemplating a new hydroelectric dam, nobody adds up the disutility to all the squirrels in the valley to be flooded.
If you believe the utility monster is a problem with utilitarianism, how do you take into account the well-being of squirrels? How about ants? Worms? Bacteria? You've gone to 1015 others just with ants.2 Maybe 1020 with nematodes.
"But humans are different!" our anti-utilitarian complains. "They're so much more intelligent and emotionally complex than nematodes that it would be repugnant to wipe out all humans to save any number of nematodes."
Well, that's what a real utility monster looks like.
The same people who believe this then turn around and say there's a problem with utilitarianism because (when unpacked into a plausible real-life example) it might kill all the nematodes to save one human. Given their beliefs, they should complain about the opposite "problem": For a sufficient number of nematodes, an instantiation of utilitarianism might say not to kill all the nematodes to save one human.
1. I use the term in a very general way, meaning any action selection system that uses a utility function—which in practice means any rational, deterministic action selection system in which action preferences are well-ordered.
2. This recent attempt to estimate the number of different living beings of different kinds gives some numbers. The web has many pages claiming there are 1015 ants, but I haven't found a citation of any original source.