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 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.