To make sure I understand you correctly. are these correct conclusions from what you have said?
a. It is permitted (i.e. ethical) to lie to yourself (though probably not prudent)
b. It is permitted (i.e. ethical) to act in a way which will force you to tell a lie tomorrow
c. It is forbidden (i.e. unethical) to lie now to avoid lying tomorrow (no matter how many times or how significant the lie in the future)
d. The differences between the systems will only express themselves in unusual corner cases, but the underlying conceptual structure is very different
I still don’t understand your view of utilitarian consequentialism, if ‘maximizing utility’ isn’t a deontological obligation emanating from personhood or the like, where does it come from?
A, B, and C all look correct as stated, presuming situations really did meet the weird criteria for B and C. I think differences between consequentialism and deontology come up sometimes in regular situations, but less often when humans are running them, since human architecture will drag us all towards a fuzzy intuitionist middle.
I don’t think I understand the last paragraph. Can you rephrase?
Why don’t you view the consequentialist imperative to always seek maximum utility as a deontological rule? If it isn’t deontological where does it come from?
The imperative to maximize utility is utilitarian, not necessarily consequentialist. I know I keep harping on this point, but it’s an important distinction.
Edit: And even more specifically, it’s total utilitarian.
Keep up the good work. Any idea where this conflation might have come from? It’s widespread enough that there might be some commonly misunderstood article in the archives.
I don’t know if it’s anything specific… classic utilitarianism is the most common form of consequentialism espoused on Lesswrong, I think, so it could be as simple as “the most commonly encountered member of a category is assumed to represent the whole category”.
It could also be because utilitarianism was the first (?) form of consequentialism to be put forth by philosophers. Certainly it predates some of the more esoteric forms of consequentialism. I’m pretty sure it’s also got more famous philosophers defending it, by rather a large margin, than any other form of consequentialism.
To me, it looks like consequentialists care exclusively about prudence, which I also care about, and not at all about morality, which I also care about. It looks to me like the thing consequentialists call morality just is prudence and comes from the same places prudence comes from—wanting things, appreciating the nature of cause and effect, etc.
Could you elaborate on what this thing you call “morality” is?
To me, it seems like the “morality” that deontology aspires to be, or to represent / capture, doesn’t actually exist, and thus deontology fails on its own criterion. Consequentialism also fails in this sense, of course, but consequentialism does not actually attempt to work as the sort of “morality” you seem to be referring to.
Thank you, I think I understand this now.
To make sure I understand you correctly. are these correct conclusions from what you have said? a. It is permitted (i.e. ethical) to lie to yourself (though probably not prudent) b. It is permitted (i.e. ethical) to act in a way which will force you to tell a lie tomorrow c. It is forbidden (i.e. unethical) to lie now to avoid lying tomorrow (no matter how many times or how significant the lie in the future) d. The differences between the systems will only express themselves in unusual corner cases, but the underlying conceptual structure is very different
I still don’t understand your view of utilitarian consequentialism, if ‘maximizing utility’ isn’t a deontological obligation emanating from personhood or the like, where does it come from?
A, B, and C all look correct as stated, presuming situations really did meet the weird criteria for B and C. I think differences between consequentialism and deontology come up sometimes in regular situations, but less often when humans are running them, since human architecture will drag us all towards a fuzzy intuitionist middle.
I don’t think I understand the last paragraph. Can you rephrase?
Why don’t you view the consequentialist imperative to always seek maximum utility as a deontological rule? If it isn’t deontological where does it come from?
The imperative to maximize utility is utilitarian, not necessarily consequentialist. I know I keep harping on this point, but it’s an important distinction.
Edit: And even more specifically, it’s total utilitarian.
Keep up the good work. Any idea where this conflation might have come from? It’s widespread enough that there might be some commonly misunderstood article in the archives.
I don’t know if it’s anything specific… classic utilitarianism is the most common form of consequentialism espoused on Lesswrong, I think, so it could be as simple as “the most commonly encountered member of a category is assumed to represent the whole category”.
It could also be because utilitarianism was the first (?) form of consequentialism to be put forth by philosophers. Certainly it predates some of the more esoteric forms of consequentialism. I’m pretty sure it’s also got more famous philosophers defending it, by rather a large margin, than any other form of consequentialism.
It’s VNM consequentialist, which is a broader category then the common meaning of “utilitarian”.
To me, it looks like consequentialists care exclusively about prudence, which I also care about, and not at all about morality, which I also care about. It looks to me like the thing consequentialists call morality just is prudence and comes from the same places prudence comes from—wanting things, appreciating the nature of cause and effect, etc.
Thank you for all of your clarifications, I think I now understand how you are viewing morality.
Could you elaborate on what this thing you call “morality” is?
To me, it seems like the “morality” that deontology aspires to be, or to represent / capture, doesn’t actually exist, and thus deontology fails on its own criterion. Consequentialism also fails in this sense, of course, but consequentialism does not actually attempt to work as the sort of “morality” you seem to be referring to.