So, you’re saying that “awesomeness” or “utility” is what is to be measured or approximated. Is that utilitarianism?
No.
There are two different concepts that “utility” refers to. VNM utility is “that for which the calculus of expectation is legitimate”. ie. it encodes your preferences, with no implication about what those preferences may be, except that they behave senisibly under uncertainty.
Utilitarian utility is an older (I think) concept referring to a particular assignment of utilities involving a sum of people’s individual utilities, possibly computed from happiness or something. I think utilitarianism is wrong, but that’s just me.
I was referring to VNM utility, so you are correct that we also need a theory of goodness to assign utilities. See my “morality is awesome” post for a half-baked but practially useful solution to that problem.
No.
There are two different concepts that “utility” refers to. VNM utility is “that for which the calculus of expectation is legitimate”. ie. it encodes your preferences, with no implication about what those preferences may be, except that they behave senisibly under uncertainty.
Utilitarian utility is an older (I think) concept referring to a particular assignment of utilities involving a sum of people’s individual utilities, possibly computed from happiness or something. I think utilitarianism is wrong, but that’s just me.
I was referring to VNM utility, so you are correct that we also need a theory of goodness to assign utilities. See my “morality is awesome” post for a half-baked but practially useful solution to that problem.
Got it. Much appreciated.
No problem. Glad to have someone curious asking questions and tryign to learn!