Hm. I can say truthfully that I don’t care whether I like vanilla or chocolate ice cream more. I suppose that the statement of my utility with regard to eating vanilla vs. chocolate ice cream would be ‘I assign higher utility to eating the flavor of ice cream which tastes better to me.’ That is, I only care about a state of my mind. So, if the circumstances changed so I could procure that state of mind by other means (ex: eating vanilla instead of chocolate ice cream), I would have no problem with that. The action that I would take after being hit by the alien ray gun does not give me any less utility after being hit by the alien ray gun than the action that I take now gives me in the present. So I don’t care whether I get hit by the ray gun.
But my statement of utility with regard to people being raped would be “I assign much lower utility to someone being raped them not being raped.” Here, I care about a state of the world outside of my mind. The action that I would take after being hit by the alien ray gun (rape) has less utility under my current utility function than (~rape), so my current utility function would assign negative utility to being hit by the ray gun.
This much makes sense to me.
I don’t know what ‘reflective equilibrium’ means; this may be because I didn’t really make it through the metaethics sequence. After I formulated what I’ve said in this comment and the above one, I wasn’t getting much out of it.
Edit: Inserted some italics for the main difference between the two scenarios and removed a set of italics. No content changes.
Hm. I can say truthfully that I don’t care whether I like vanilla or chocolate ice cream more. I suppose that the statement of my utility with regard to eating vanilla vs. chocolate ice cream would be ‘I assign higher utility to eating the flavor of ice cream which tastes better to me.’ That is, I only care about a state of my mind. So, if the circumstances changed so I could procure that state of mind by other means (ex: eating vanilla instead of chocolate ice cream), I would have no problem with that. The action that I would take after being hit by the alien ray gun does not give me any less utility after being hit by the alien ray gun than the action that I take now gives me in the present. So I don’t care whether I get hit by the ray gun.
But my statement of utility with regard to people being raped would be “I assign much lower utility to someone being raped them not being raped.” Here, I care about a state of the world outside of my mind. The action that I would take after being hit by the alien ray gun (rape) has less utility under my current utility function than (~rape), so my current utility function would assign negative utility to being hit by the ray gun.
This much makes sense to me.
I don’t know what ‘reflective equilibrium’ means; this may be because I didn’t really make it through the metaethics sequence. After I formulated what I’ve said in this comment and the above one, I wasn’t getting much out of it.
Edit: Inserted some italics for the main difference between the two scenarios and removed a set of italics. No content changes.