blacktrance comments on 2014 Survey of Effective Altruists - Less Wrong

27 Post author: tog 05 May 2014 02:32AM

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Comment author: blacktrance 07 May 2014 03:24:56PM *  2 points [-]

Someone could be an ethical subjectivist and want to maximize world utility, but such a person would not be a utilitarian, because utilitarianism holds that other people should maximize world utility. If you merely say "I want to maximize world utility and others to do the same", that is not utilitarianism - a utilitarian would say that you ought to maximize world utility, even if you don't want to, and it's not a matter of attitudes. Yes, this is arguing over definitions to some extent, but it's important because I often see this kind of confusion about utilitarianism on LW.

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 07 May 2014 03:51:15PM 1 point [-]

Could you provide a reference for that? At least the SEP entry on the topic doesn't clearly state this. I'm also unsure of what difference this makes in practice - I guess we could come up with a new word for all the people who are both moral antirealist and utilitarian-aside-for-being-moral-antirealists, but I'm not sure if the difference in their behavior and beliefs is large enough for that to be worth it.

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 07 May 2014 08:30:23PM 0 points [-]

Non egoistic subjectivists?

Comment author: blacktrance 07 May 2014 07:48:26PM 0 points [-]

The SEP entry for consequentialism says it "is the view that normative properties depend only on consequences", implying a belief in normative properties, which means moral realism.

If you want to describe people's actions, a utilitarian and a world-utility-maximizing non-realist would act similarly, but there would be differences in attitude: a utilitarian would say and feel like he is doing the morally right thing and those who disagree with him are in error, whereas the non-realist would merely feel like he is doing what he wants and that there is nothing special about wanting to maximize world utility - to him, it's just another preference, like collecting stamps or eating ice cream.

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 07 May 2014 08:36:38PM 3 points [-]

This is getting way too much into a debate over definitions so I'll stop after this comment, but I'll just point out that, among professional philosophers, there is no correlation between endorsing consequentialism and endorsing moral realism.

Comment author: blacktrance 07 May 2014 08:53:27PM *  0 points [-]

A non-consequentialist could be a moral realist as well, such as if they were a deontologist, so it's not a good measurement.

Also, consequentialism and moral realism aren't always well-defined terms.

Edit: That survey's results are strange. Twenty people answered that they're moral realists but non-cognitivists, though moral realism is necessarily cognitivist.