Wei, yes my comment was less clear than I was hoping. I was talking about the distinction between ‘psychological hedonism’ and ‘hedonism’ and I also mentioned the many person versions of these theories (‘psychological utilitarianism’ and ‘utilitarianism’). Lets forget about the many person versions for the moment and just look at the simple theories.
Hedonism is the theory that the only thing good for each individual is his or her happiness. If you have two worlds, A and B and the happiness for Mary is higher in world A, then world A is better for Mary. This is a theory of what makes someone’s life go well, or to put it another way, about what is of objective value in a person’s life. It is often used as a component of an ethical theory such as utilitarianism.
Psychological hedonism is the theory that people ultimately aim to increase their happiness. Thus, if they can do one of two acts, X and Y and realise that X will increase their happiness more than Y, they will do X. This is not a theory of what makes someone’s life go well, or a theory of ethics. It is merely a theory of psychological motivation. In other words, it is a scientific hypothesis which says that people are wired up so that they are ultimately pursuing their own happiness.
There is some connection between these theories, but it is quite possible to hold one and not the other. For example, I think that hedonism is true but psychological hedonism is false. I even think this can be a good thing since people get more happiness when not directly aiming at it. Helping your lover because you love them leads to more happiness than helping them in order to get more happiness. It is also quite possible to accept psychological hedonism and not hedonism. You might think that people are motivated to increase their happiness, but that they shouldn’t be. For example, it might be best for them to live a profound life, not a happy one.
Each theory says that happiness is the utlimate thing of value in a certain sense, but these are different senses. The first is about what I would call actual value: it is about the type of value that is involved in a ‘should’ claim. It is normative. The second is about what people are actually motivated to do. It is involved in ‘would’ claims.
Eliezer has shown that he does care about some of the things that make him happy over and above the happiness they bring, however he asked:
‘The question, rather, is whether we should care about the things that make us happy, apart from any happiness they bring.’
Whether he would do something and whether he should are different things, and I’m not satisfied that he has answered the latter.
If there’s a standard alternative term in moral philosophy then do please let me know.
As far as I know, there is not. In moral philosophy, when deontologists talk about morality, they are typically talking about things that are for the benefit of others. Indeed, they even have conversations about how to balance between self-interest and the demands of morality. In contrast, consequentialists have a theory that already accounts for the benefit of the agent who is doing the decision making: it counts just as much as anyone else. Thus for consequentialists, there is typically no separate conflict between self-interest and morality: morality for them already takes this into account. So in summary, many moral philosophers are aware of the distinction, but I don’t know of any pre-existing terms for it.
By the way, don’t worry too much about explaining all pre-requisites before making a post. Explaining some of them afterwards in response to comments can be a more engaging way to do it. In particular, it means that us readers can see which parts we are skeptical of and then just focus our attention on posts which defend that aspect, skimming the ones that we already agree with. Even when it comes to the book, it will probably be worth giving a sketch of where you want to end up early on, with forward references to the appropriate later chapters as needed. This will let the readers read the pre-requisite chapters in a more focused way.