Sorry, I didn’t explain this very well. I don’t use consequentialism to judge people, I use it to judge possible courses of action. I (try to) make choices with the best consequences, this fully determines actions, so judgments of, for example, who is a bad person, do not add anything.
You are right that this is very broad. My point is that all consequentialist decision rules are either Bayesian decision rules or limits of Bayesian decision rules, according to a theorem.
I didn’t discuss who is a bad person. An action might be bad but have a good result (this time) by chance. And you haven’t said a word about what kinds of consequences of actions are good or bad … I mean desirable or undesirable. And you haven’t said why everything but consequences is inadmissible.
In your example of someone shooting a police officer, I would say that it is good that the police officer’s life was saved, but it is bad that there is a person who would shoot people so irresponsibly and I would not declare that person a hero as that will neither help save more police officers or reduce the number of people shooting recklessly; in fact, it would probably increase the number of reckless people.
I don’t want to get into the specifics of morality, because it is complex. The only reason that I specified consequentialist decision making is that it is a condition of the theorem that proves Bayesian decision making to be optimal. Entirely nonconsequentialist systems don’t need to learn about the universe to make decisions and partially consequentialist systems are more complicated. For the latter, Bayesianism is often necessary if there are times when nonconsequentialist factors have little import to a decision.
it is bad that there is a person who would shoot people so irresponsibly
You are here judging a non-action by a non-consequence.
Yes, this is a non-action; I often say it is bad that as shorthand for cetris paribus, I would act so as to make not be the case. However, it is a consequence of what happened before (though you may have just meant it is not a consequence of my action). Judgements are often attached to consequences without specifying which action they are consequences of, just for convenience.
I think you mean systems which ignore all consequences. Popper’s system does not do that.
Sorry, I didn’t explain this very well. I don’t use consequentialism to judge people, I use it to judge possible courses of action. I (try to) make choices with the best consequences, this fully determines actions, so judgments of, for example, who is a bad person, do not add anything.
You are right that this is very broad. My point is that all consequentialist decision rules are either Bayesian decision rules or limits of Bayesian decision rules, according to a theorem.
I didn’t discuss who is a bad person. An action might be bad but have a good result (this time) by chance. And you haven’t said a word about what kinds of consequences of actions are good or bad … I mean desirable or undesirable. And you haven’t said why everything but consequences is inadmissible.
In your example of someone shooting a police officer, I would say that it is good that the police officer’s life was saved, but it is bad that there is a person who would shoot people so irresponsibly and I would not declare that person a hero as that will neither help save more police officers or reduce the number of people shooting recklessly; in fact, it would probably increase the number of reckless people.
I don’t want to get into the specifics of morality, because it is complex. The only reason that I specified consequentialist decision making is that it is a condition of the theorem that proves Bayesian decision making to be optimal. Entirely nonconsequentialist systems don’t need to learn about the universe to make decisions and partially consequentialist systems are more complicated. For the latter, Bayesianism is often necessary if there are times when nonconsequentialist factors have little import to a decision.
You are here judging a non-action by a non-consequence.
I think you mean systems which ignore all consequences. Popper’s system does not do that.
Popper’s system incorporates observational evidence in the form of criticism: ideas can be criticized for contradicting it.
Yes, this is a non-action; I often say it is bad that as shorthand for cetris paribus, I would act so as to make not be the case. However, it is a consequence of what happened before (though you may have just meant it is not a consequence of my action). Judgements are often attached to consequences without specifying which action they are consequences of, just for convenience.
Yes, that was what I meant.