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shminux comments on Philosophy professors fail on basic philosophy problems - Less Wrong Discussion

16 Post author: shminux 15 July 2015 06:41PM

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Comment author: shminux 17 July 2015 03:37:02PM 0 points [-]

Thanks, that makes sense.

I have no idea how to avoid that sort of error, beyond basing my answers on some artificially created algorithm rather than my moral judgment.

Do you think that this is what utilitarianism is, or ought to be?

I mean, I could, when presented with the "save" formulation, think to myself "What would I say in the 'die' formulation?" before coming up with a response, but that procedure is still susceptible to framing effects. The answer I come up with might not be the same as what I would have said if presented with the "die" formulation in the first place.

So, do you think that, absent a formal algorithm, when presented with a "save" formulation, a (properly trained) philosopher should immediately detect the framing effect, recast the problem in the "die" formulation (or some alternative framing-free formulation), all before even attempting to solve the problem, to avoid anchoring and other biases? If so, has this approach been advocated by a moral philosopher you know of?

Comment author: pragmatist 18 July 2015 03:46:30AM *  3 points [-]

Do you think that this is what utilitarianism is, or ought to be?

Utilitarianism does offer the possibility of a precise, algorithmic approach to morality, but we don't have anything close to that as of now. People disagree about what "utility" is, how it should be measured, and how it should be aggregated. And of course, even if they did agree, actually performing the calculation in most realistic cases would require powers of prediction and computation well beyond our abilities.

The reason I used the phrase "artificially created", though, is that I think any attempt at systematization, utilitarianism included, will end up doing considerable violence to our moral intuitions. Our moral sensibilities are the product of a pretty hodge-podge process of evolution and cultural assimilation, so I don't think there's any reason to expect them to be neatly systematizable. One response is that the benefits of having a system (such as bias mitigation) are strong enough to justify biting the bullet, but I'm not sure that's the right way to think about morality, especially if you're a moral realist. In science, it might often be worthwhile using a simplified model even though you know there is a cost in terms of accuracy. In moral reasoning, though, it seems weird to say "I know this model doesn't always correctly distinguish right from wrong, but its simplicity and precision outweigh that cost".

So, do you think that, absent a formal algorithm, when presented with a "save" formulation, a (properly trained) philosopher should immediately detect the framing effect, recast the problem in the "die" formulation (or some alternative framing-free formulation), all before even attempting to solve the problem, to avoid anchoring and other biases?

Something like this might be useful, but I'm not at all confident it would work. Sounds like another research project for the Harvard Moral Psychology Research Lab. I'm not aware of any moral philosopher proposing something along these lines, but I'm not extremely familiar with that literature. I do philosophy of science, not moral philosophy.