Is a consequentialist who has artificially bounded their utility function still truly a consequentialist? Likewise, if you make a deontological ruleset complicated and probabilistic enough, it starts to look a lot like a utility function.
There may still be modeling and self-image differences—the deontologist considers their choices to be terminally valuable, and the consequentialist considers these as ONLY instrumental to the utility of future experiences.
Weirdly, the consequentialist DOES typically assign utility to imagined universe-state that their experiences support, and it’s unclear why that’s all that different to the value of the experience of choosing correctly.
I agree that any deontologist can be represented as a consequentialist, by making the utility function complicated enough. I also agree that certain very sophisticated and complicated deontologists can probably be represented as consequentialists with not-too-complex utility functions.
Is a consequentialist who has artificially bounded their utility function still truly a consequentialist? Likewise, if you make a deontological ruleset complicated and probabilistic enough, it starts to look a lot like a utility function.
There may still be modeling and self-image differences—the deontologist considers their choices to be terminally valuable, and the consequentialist considers these as ONLY instrumental to the utility of future experiences.
Weirdly, the consequentialist DOES typically assign utility to imagined universe-state that their experiences support, and it’s unclear why that’s all that different to the value of the experience of choosing correctly.
A consequentialist with an unbounded utility function is broken, due to pascal’s mugging-related problems. At least that’s my opinion. See Tiny Probabilities of Vast Utilities: A Problem for Longtermism? - EA Forum (effectivealtruism.org)
I agree that any deontologist can be represented as a consequentialist, by making the utility function complicated enough. I also agree that certain very sophisticated and complicated deontologists can probably be represented as consequentialists with not-too-complex utility functions.
Not sure if we are disagreeing about anything.