I'm pretty sure that there are people who sincerely claim to be utilitarians in the sense that they try to use that ethical doctrine to guide their actions. Is this really controversial? To anyone besides tim_tyler, that is?
ETA: I recognize that I am confused. Can anyone point out what I am missing here?
I thought you might be suggesting that no-one is actually a utilitarian, although they might believe they are.
It seems to me that usually, when someone says "ethics" on lesswrong, ey usually means something along the lines of decision theory. When an average person says "ethics", ey is usually referring to a system of intuitions and social pressures designed to influence the behavior of members of a group. I think that a lot of the disagreement regarding ethics (i.e. consequentialism vs deontology) is rooted in a failure to properly distinguish between decision theory and what society pressures people to do. Most lesswrong users probably understand the distinction fairly clearly, but we only ever talk about decision theory. Why don't we talk about the social meaning of ethics?