Armok_GoB comments on On Terminal Goals and Virtue Ethics - Less Wrong
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Funny, I always thought it was the other way around... consequentialism is useful on the tactical level once you've decided what a "good outcome" is, but on the meta-level, trying to figure out what a good outcome is, you get into questions that you need the help of virtue ethics or something similar to puzzle through. Questions like "is it better to be alive and suffering or to be dead", or "is causing a human pain worse than causing a pig pain", or "when does it become wrong to abort a fetus", or even "is there good or bad at all?"
What actually happens is you should be consequential at even-numbered meta-levels and virtue-based on the odd numbered ones... or was it the other way around? :p