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Reasonable Requirements of any Moral Theory
cunning_moralist10

Nobody is calling “a universal decision theory a moral theory”. According to hedonistic utilitarianism, and indeed all consequentialism, all actions are morally significant.

‘Moral’ means regarding opinions of which actions ought to be performed.

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1DanArmak
So "morals" is used to mean the same as "values" or "goals" or "preferences". It's not how I'm used to encountering the word, and it's confusing in comparison to how it's used in other contexts. Humans have separate moral and a-moral desires (and beliefs, emotions, judgments, etc) and when discussing human behavior, as opposed to idealized or artificial behavior, the distinction is useful. Of course every field or community is allowed to redefine existing terminology, and many do. But now, whenever I encounter the word "moral", I'll have to remind myself I may be misunderstanding the intended meaning (in either direction).
Reasonable Requirements of any Moral Theory
cunning_moralist10

Two different actions don’t produce exactly the same utility, but even if they did it wouldn’t be any problem. To say that you may chose any one of two actions when it doesn’t matter which one you chose since they have the same value, isn’t to give “no guidance”. Consequentialists want to maximize the intrinsic value, and both these actions do just that.

Of course hedonistic utilitarianism doesn’t require completeness, which, by the way, isn’t one of its tenets either. But since it is complete, which of course is better than being incomplete, it’s normal fo... (read more)

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0UmamiSalami
Proves my point. That's no different from how most most moral theories respond to questions like "which shirt do I wear". So this 'completeness criterion' has to be made so weak as to be uninteresting.
Reasonable Requirements of any Moral Theory
cunning_moralist10

The author is far from alone in his view that both a complete rightness criterion and a consistent decision method must be required of all serious moral theories.

Among hedonistic utilitarians it's quite normal to demand both completeness, to include all (human) situations, and consistency, to avoid contradictions. The author simply describes what's normal among consequentialists, who, after all, are more or less the rational ones. ;-) There's one interesting exception though! The demand to include all situations, including the non-human ones, is radical, and quite hard a challenge for hedonistic utilitarians, who do have problems with the bloodthirsty predators of the jungle.

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2UmamiSalami
Utilitarianism provides no guidance on many decisions: any decision where both actions produce the same utility. Even if it is a complete theory, I don't think that completeness is demanded of the theory; rather it's merely a tenet of it. I can't think of any good a priori reasons to expect a theory to be complete in the first place.
0DanArmak
I'm confused. Is it normal to regard all possible acts and decisions as morally significant, and to call a universal decision theory a moral theory? What meaning does the word "moral" even have at that point?
[Link] A Darwinian Response to Sam Harris’s Moral Landscape Challenge
cunning_moralist30

In trying to refute The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, in the way that the linked blog does, I believe that it’s quite unimportant whether or not

  • only conscious minds can experience well-being,
  • Sam Harris himself believes that only conscious minds can experience well-being, or
  • well-being is the same thing as pleasure.

What the linked Darwinian response criticises Harris for, among other things, is that he doesn’t formulate a rightness criterion, despite that he claims that science implies some kind of impartial hedonism. But... (read more)

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0gurugeorge
I disagree that any of those three points are unimportant, they're central parts of Harris' argument and they are part of what has to be refuted. The idea that there has to be a "rightness criterion" (or an "intrinsic" criterion as per the article) is very much what Harris' view questions, and his position has very little to do with hedonism (hedonism is just a partially-intersecting sub-set of what he's talking about). To violate Hume's distinction, you don't need to say there's a "higher meaning" in fitnessism, you just need to say that a "rightness criterion" can be based on "what is" (how animals actually behave). It's like this: Hume's distinction, while valid, is (contrary to his belief and popular belief) irrelevant to morality. A reason has to be given why the "ought" of morality cannot be instrumental all the way down (or rather up and down), why morality has to have an "intrinsic" or "absolute" criterion at all. Essentially, all that's happened is that people formerly thought that moral behaviour had to be mandated or commanded by a God. God is dead, but people from the time of the Enlightenment on still had a vague feeling that there has to be some kind of "ought" that's not instrumental, that grounds morality - as it were, the ghost of a mandate, a mandate-shaped hole at the root of morality. What Harris is saying (and I agree) is that no mandate or command is required for morality, there is no other kind of "ought" than the instrumental, there just seems to be; and it's the instrumental "ought" that's at work in morality just as it is in, e.g., technology, from the basic level (which everyone agrees on - i.e. science helps with the nitty gritty) to the high level (at the level of the "if" of the "if .. then", where there's doubt, where people think there has to be this other kind of mysterious "ought"). The trick is to see how.
Welcome to Less Wrong! (7th thread, December 2014)
cunning_moralist60

I love teaching, especially interacting with my students and their thinking, and I love philosophy, especially ethics. Understandably, I'm a philosophy teacher. I also enjoy politics, history, biology and the great outdoors.

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