I notice you seem to be assuming something like utilitarian metaethics—you don’t see any kind of open questions about deontology or virtue ethics. That seems to have a bearing on your bold claim that that value can be reduced to fact.
most of what look like terminal values disagreements are not truly terminal.[4]
The next sentence takes about discovering how much agents want different things, …
Right now, we do not know how to weight different people’s experiences against each othe
...as if the way the reduction will work is a weighted compromise. But that would depend on the correct metaethics. According to many versions of deontology, some things are just plumb wrong.snd you shouldn’t do them at all no matter how many people like them.
I notice you seem to be assuming something like utilitarian metaethics—you don’t see any kind of open questions about deontology or virtue ethics.
I’m not sure what you mean by “utilitarian metaethics” but I’d say my post is mainly about axiology, and any reasonable moral theory has a consequences-oriented axiology. Deontology and virtue ethics theories agree with consequentialism that it’s good for there to be more good stuff. There can be different theories of what “good stuff” means, but a particular deontologist and a particular consequentialist might be in 100% agreement about that question.
On the question of weighting experiences, I hadn’t thought about this much til you brought it up but here’s my current perspective:
Take chicken welfare as an example. Some theory of deontology might say that it’s wrong to factory-farm chickens if they experience any suffering, regardless of the degree of that suffering; whereas a utilitarian might say chicken farming is okay if their suffering is sufficiently low-level. So both care about chicken experiences, and therefore the fact of the matter about chicken experiences is relevant, but for that deontological theory it’s a binary question, not a weighting.
Alternatively, a deontological theory might say that causing suffering is permissible if you get a sufficiently large benefit in exchange (as I understand, this view is popular among deontologist philosophers). That theory does want to know the magnitude of chicken suffering, because factory farming might be permissible if the level of suffering is low enough that it can be outweighted by the benefits to humans. (FWIW I find it pretty implausible that it would be, but I’m sure I could come up with some other example scenario where it’s more plausible.) My point being that deontologists probably also care about the (probably-)factual question of the magnitudes of experiences of different beings.
I notice you seem to be assuming something like utilitarian metaethics—you don’t see any kind of open questions about deontology or virtue ethics. That seems to have a bearing on your bold claim that that value can be reduced to fact.
The next sentence takes about discovering how much agents want different things, …
...as if the way the reduction will work is a weighted compromise. But that would depend on the correct metaethics. According to many versions of deontology, some things are just plumb wrong.snd you shouldn’t do them at all no matter how many people like them.
I’m not sure what you mean by “utilitarian metaethics” but I’d say my post is mainly about axiology, and any reasonable moral theory has a consequences-oriented axiology. Deontology and virtue ethics theories agree with consequentialism that it’s good for there to be more good stuff. There can be different theories of what “good stuff” means, but a particular deontologist and a particular consequentialist might be in 100% agreement about that question.
On the question of weighting experiences, I hadn’t thought about this much til you brought it up but here’s my current perspective:
Take chicken welfare as an example. Some theory of deontology might say that it’s wrong to factory-farm chickens if they experience any suffering, regardless of the degree of that suffering; whereas a utilitarian might say chicken farming is okay if their suffering is sufficiently low-level. So both care about chicken experiences, and therefore the fact of the matter about chicken experiences is relevant, but for that deontological theory it’s a binary question, not a weighting.
Alternatively, a deontological theory might say that causing suffering is permissible if you get a sufficiently large benefit in exchange (as I understand, this view is popular among deontologist philosophers). That theory does want to know the magnitude of chicken suffering, because factory farming might be permissible if the level of suffering is low enough that it can be outweighted by the benefits to humans. (FWIW I find it pretty implausible that it would be, but I’m sure I could come up with some other example scenario where it’s more plausible.) My point being that deontologists probably also care about the (probably-)factual question of the magnitudes of experiences of different beings.