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JulianMorrison comments on What Would You Do Without Morality? - Less Wrong
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Oh, so now you're just talking about personal morals. One of my examples already covered that: 'One can believe one ought to do something, without wanting to do it'. Why the presumption that utility functions capture decision-making? You acknowledge that preferences and hence utilities don't always lead to decisions. And why the assumption that not meeting the axioms of rational choice theory makes you irrational? Morality might not even be appropriately described by the axioms of rational choice theory; how can you express everyone's moral beliefs as real numbers? On the chocolate example, I can think I ought not eat the chocolate, but nevertheless prefer to eat it, and even actually eat; so your counterargument does not work. Given that you are not claiming all preferences meet the axioms - only "rational" preferences do (where's your support?) - you cannot say 'every form of preference corresponds to different utility functions, whether it's revealed, actual, or some other thing'. And again, we ought to ask ourselves whether preferences or rational preferences are actually the right sort of thing to be expressed by the axioms; can they really be expressed as real numbers?
Which axiom do you think shouldn't apply? If you can't give me an argument why not to agree with any given axiom, then why shouldn't I use them?
Obviously, if I prefer X to Y, and also prefer Y to X, then I'm being incoherent and that can't be captured by a utility function. I expressly outlaw those kind of preferences.
Argue for a specific form of preference that violates the axioms.
If you can't give me an argument as to why all your axioms apply, then why should I accept any of your claims?
A specific form of preference that violates the axioms? Any preference which is "irrational" under those axioms, and you already acknowledged preferences of that sort existed.
I see no counterexamples to any of the axioms. If they're so wrong, you should be able to come up with a set of preferences that someone could actually support.
You need to argue that those are useful in some sense. Preferring A over B and B over A doesn't follow the axioms, but I see no reason to use such systems. Is that really your position, that coherence and consistency don't matter?
As an extremely basic example: I could prefer chocolate ice cream over vanilla ice cream, and prefer vanilla ice cream over pistachio ice cream. Under the Von Neumann-Morgenstein axioms, however, I cannot then prefer pistachio to chocolate because that would violate the transitivity axiom. You are correct that there is probably someone out there who holds all three preferences simultaneously. I would call such a person "irrational". Wouldn't you?