Isn’t there something a little bit broken about trying to find a utility system that will produce the conclusions you presently hold? How would you ever know if your intuitions were wrong?
What basis do I have for a utility system besides my moral intuitions? If my intuitions are inconsistent, I’ll notice that because every system I formulate will be inconsistent. (Currently, I think that if my intuitions are inconsistent the best fix will be accepting the repugnant conclusion, which I would be relatively okay with.)
I understand what you are saying. But when I start with a conclusion, what I find myself doing is rationalizing. Even if my reasons are logically consistent I am suspicious of any product based on this process.
If it helps, the thought process that produced the great^4-grandparent was something like this:
“Total utilitarianism leads to the repugnant conclusion; average leads to killing unhappy people. If there was some middle ground between these two broken concepts . . . hm, what if people who were alive and are now dead count as having zero utility, versus the utility they could be experiencing? That makes sense, and it’s mathematically elegant. And it weighs preserving and restoring life over creating it! This is starting to look like a good approximation of my values. Better post it on LW and see if it stands up to scrutiny.”
Isn’t there something a little bit broken about trying to find a utility system that will produce the conclusions you presently hold? How would you ever know if your intuitions were wrong?
What basis do I have for a utility system besides my moral intuitions? If my intuitions are inconsistent, I’ll notice that because every system I formulate will be inconsistent. (Currently, I think that if my intuitions are inconsistent the best fix will be accepting the repugnant conclusion, which I would be relatively okay with.)
I understand what you are saying. But when I start with a conclusion, what I find myself doing is rationalizing. Even if my reasons are logically consistent I am suspicious of any product based on this process.
If it helps, the thought process that produced the great^4-grandparent was something like this:
“Total utilitarianism leads to the repugnant conclusion; average leads to killing unhappy people. If there was some middle ground between these two broken concepts . . . hm, what if people who were alive and are now dead count as having zero utility, versus the utility they could be experiencing? That makes sense, and it’s mathematically elegant. And it weighs preserving and restoring life over creating it! This is starting to look like a good approximation of my values. Better post it on LW and see if it stands up to scrutiny.”