Paul_Gowder comments on Circular Altruism - Less Wrong

40 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 22 January 2008 06:00PM

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Comment author: Paul_Gowder 23 January 2008 11:49:00PM 2 points [-]

I think I'm going to have to write another of my own posts on this (hadn't I already?), when I have time. Which might not be for a while -- which might be never -- we'll see.

For now, let me ask you this Eliezer: often, we think that our intuitions about cases provide a reliable guide to morality. Without that, there's a serious question about where our moral principles come from. (I, for one, think that question has its most serious bite right on utilitarian moral principles... at least Kant, say, had an argument about how the nature of moral claims leads to his principles.)

So suppose -- hypothetically, and I do mean hypothetically -- that our best argument for the claim "one ought to maximize net welfare" comes by induction from our intuitions about individual cases. Could we then legitimately use that principle to defend the opposite of our intuitions about cases like this?

More later, I hope.