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utilitymonster comments on Sam Harris' surprisingly modest proposal - Less Wrong Discussion

12 Post author: sketerpot 06 October 2010 12:46AM

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Comment author: utilitymonster 09 October 2010 01:38:56PM 1 point [-]

My reaction is that moral philosophy just isn't science. Sure, if you're a utilitarian you can use empirical evidence to figure out what maximizes aggregate welfare, relative to your account of well-being, but you can't use science to discover that utilitarianism is true. This is because utilitarianism, like any other first-order normative theory and many meta-ethical theories, doesn't lead you to expect any experiences over any other experiences.