" 'What is true is already so. The coherent extrapolated volition of God doesn't make it worse' is obviusly false if and only if timeless politics is isomorphic to truth if and only if the tenth virtue of rationality is 'Let me not become attached to the map I may not want' " is obviously false.
Well, it's true.
Also, This is way smarter than than the Deepak Chopra quote generator.
Yes. P2 finding this out would harm him, and couldn't possibly benefit anyone else, so if searching would lead him to believe the cube doesn't exist, it would be ethically better if he didn't search. But the harm to P2 is a result of his knowledge, not the mere fact of the cube's inexistence. Likewise, P1 should investigate assuming he would find the cube. The reason for this difference is that investigating would have a different effect on the mental states of P1 than it would on the mental states of P2. If the cube in U1 can't be found by P1, than the asymmetry is gone, and neither should investigate.
I would not be in favor of wireheading the human race, but I don't see how that is connected to S. If wireheading all of humanity is bad, it seems clear that it is bad because it is bad for the people being wireheaded. If this is a wireheading scenario where humanity goes extinct as a result of wireheading, than this is also bad because of the hypothetical people who would have valued being alive. There is nothing about S that stops someone from comparing the normal life they would live with a wireheaded life and saying they would prefer the normal life. T...
I think you're misunderstanding what I meant. I'm using "Someone's utility" here to mean only how good or bad things are for that person. I am not claiming that people should (or do) only care about their own well-being, just that their well-being only depends on their own mental states. Do you still disagree with my statement given this definition of utility?
If someone kidnapped me and hooked me up to an experience machine that gave me a simulated perfect life, and then tortured my family for the rest of their lives, I claim that this would be g...
No, it isn't. You are claiming that P "really" wants the gold to exist, but you are also claiming that P thinks that at least one of the definitions of "the gold exists" is "the oracle said the gold exists."
I do not claim that. I claim that P believes the cube exists because the oracle says so. He could believe it exists because he saw it in a telescope. Or because he saw it fly in front of his face and then away into space. Whatever reason he has for "knowing" the cube exists has some degree of uncertainty. He is...
I guess the realism aspect isn't as relevant as I thought it would be. I expected that any realists would believe S, and that anti-realists might or might not. I also think that not believing S would imply anti-realism, but I'm not super confident that that's true.
I would say that P and Q have equal utility until the point where their circumstances diverge, after which of course they would have different utilities. There is no reason to consider future utility when talking about current utility. So it just depends on what section of time you are looking at. If you're only looking at a segment where P and Q have identical brain states, then yes I would say they have the same utility.
I said that there could be other reasons for P to want the cube to exist. If someone has a desire that fulfilling will not be good for them in any way, or good for any other sentient being, that's fine but I do not think that a desire of this type is morally relevant in any way. Further if someone claimed to have such a desire, knowing that fulfilling it served no purpose other than simply fulfilling it, I would believe them to be confused about what desire is. Surely the desire would have to be at least causing them discomfort, or at least some sort of an...
I am stipulating that P really truly wants the gold to exist (in the same way that you would want there not to exist a bunch of people who are being tortured, ceteris paribus). Whether P should be trusting the oracle is besides the point. The difference between these scenarios is that you are correct in believing that the people being tortured is morally bad. However, your well-being would not be affected by whether the people are being tortured, only by your belief of how likely this is. Of course, you would still try to stop the torture if you could, eve...
Look, if it helps, you can define utility*, which is utility that doesn't depend on anything outside the mental state of the agent, as opposed to utility**, which does. Then you can get frustrated at all these silly people who seem to mistakenly think they want to maximize their utility** instead of their utility*.
Someone can want to maximize utility**, and this is not necessarily irrational, but if they do this the are choosing to maximize something other than their own well-being.
Perhaps they are being altruistic and trying to improve someone else's ...
This is related to moral realism in that I suspect moral realists would be more likely to accept S, and S arguably provides some moral statements that are true. But it's mainly just something I was thinking about while thinking about moral realism.
I don't really know what I'm talking about when I say objective utility, I am just claiming that if such a thing exists/ makes sense to talk about, that it can only depend on the states of individual minds, since each mind's utility can only depend on the state of that mind and nothing outside of the utility of minds can be ethically relevant.
That is true, but not relevant to the point I am trying to make. If P took the first offer, they would end up exactly as well off as if they hadn't received the offer, and if P took the second offer, they would end up better off. The fact that P's beliefs don't correspond with reality does not change this. The reason that P would accept the first offer but not the second is that P believes the universe would be "better" with the cube. P does not think ey will actually be happier (or whatever) accepting offer 1, and if P does think ey will be happ...
In your example, I agree that almost everyone would choose the second choice, but my point is that they will be worse off because they make that choice. It is an act of altruism, not an act which will increase their own utility. (Possibly the horror they would experience in making choice 1 would outweigh their future suffering, but after the choice is made they are definitely worse off having made the second choice.)
I say that the cube cannot be part of P's utility function, because whether the cube exists in this example is completely decoupled from wheth...
Summary: I'm wondering whether anyone (especially moral anti-realists) would disagree with the statement, "The utility of an agent can only depend on the mental state of that agent".
I have had little success In my attempts to devise a coherent moral realist theory of meta-ethics, and am no longer very sure that moral realism is true, but there is one statement about morality that seems clearly true to me. "The utility of an agent can only depend on the mental state of that agent". Call this statement S. By utility I roughly mean how goo...
Is your position the same as Dennett's position (summarized in the second paragraph of synopsis here) ?