I aspire to be VNM rational, but not a utilitarian.
It’s all very confusing because they both use the word “utility” but they seem to be different concepts. “Utilitarianism” is a particular moral theory that (depending on the speaker) assumes consequentialism, linearish aggregation of “utility” between people, independence and linearity of utility function components, utility is proportional to “happyness” or “well-being” or preference fulfillment, etc. I’m sure any given utilitarian will disagree with something in that list, but I’ve seen all of them claimed.
VNM utility only assumes that you assign utilities to possibilities consistently, and that your utilities aggregate by expectation. It also assumes consequentialism in some sense, but it’s not hard to make utility assignments that aren’t really usefully described as consequentialist.
I reject “utilitarianism” because it is very vague, and because I disagree with many of its interpretations.
Thanks for the explanation. Reading through the Wikipedia article on utilitarianism, it seems like this is one of those words that has been muddled by the presence of too many authors using it. In the future I guess I should refer to the concept I had in mind as VNM-utilitarianism.
Probably best not to refer to it with the word “utilitarianism”, since it isn’t a form of that. Calling it “consequentialism” is arguably enough, since (making appropriate asumptions about what a rational agent must do) a rational consequentialist must use a VNM utility function. But I guess not everyone does in fact agree with those assumptions, so perhaps “utility-function based consequentialism”. Or perhaps “VNM-consequentialism”.
I aspire to be VNM rational, but not a utilitarian.
It’s all very confusing because they both use the word “utility” but they seem to be different concepts. “Utilitarianism” is a particular moral theory that (depending on the speaker) assumes consequentialism, linearish aggregation of “utility” between people, independence and linearity of utility function components, utility is proportional to “happyness” or “well-being” or preference fulfillment, etc. I’m sure any given utilitarian will disagree with something in that list, but I’ve seen all of them claimed.
VNM utility only assumes that you assign utilities to possibilities consistently, and that your utilities aggregate by expectation. It also assumes consequentialism in some sense, but it’s not hard to make utility assignments that aren’t really usefully described as consequentialist.
I reject “utilitarianism” because it is very vague, and because I disagree with many of its interpretations.
Thanks for the explanation. Reading through the Wikipedia article on utilitarianism, it seems like this is one of those words that has been muddled by the presence of too many authors using it. In the future I guess I should refer to the concept I had in mind as VNM-utilitarianism.
Probably best not to refer to it with the word “utilitarianism”, since it isn’t a form of that. Calling it “consequentialism” is arguably enough, since (making appropriate asumptions about what a rational agent must do) a rational consequentialist must use a VNM utility function. But I guess not everyone does in fact agree with those assumptions, so perhaps “utility-function based consequentialism”. Or perhaps “VNM-consequentialism”.