My first wikipedia quote (Every admissible statistical procedure is either a Bayesian procedure or a limit of Bayesian procedures.) was somewhat technical, but it basically meant that any consistent set of actions is either describable in terms of probabilities or nonconsequentialist. How would you choose the best action in a Popperian framework? Would you be forced to consider aspects of a choice other than its consequences?
Yes Popper is non-consequentialist.
Consequentialism is a bad theory. It says ideas should be evaluated by their consequences (only). This does not address the question of how to determine what are good or bad consequences.
If you try to evaluate methods of determining what are good or bad consequences, by their consequences, you’ll end up with serious regress problems. If you don’t, you’ll have to introduce something other than consequences.
You may want to be a little more careful with how you formulate this. Saying that a good idea is one that has good consequences, and a bad idea is one that has bad consequences, doesn’t invite regress… it may be that you have a different mechanism for evaluating whether a consequence is good/bad than you do for evaluating whether an idea is good/bad.
For example, I might assert that a consequence is good if it makes me happy, and bad if it makes me unhappy. (I don’t in fact assert this.) I would then conclude that an idea is good if its consequences make me happy, and bad if its consequences make me unhappy. No regress involved.
(And note that this is different from saying that an idea is good if the idea makes me happy. If it turns out that the idea “I could drink drain cleaner” makes me happy, but that actually drinking drain cleaner makes me unhappy, then it’s a bad idea by the first theory but a good idea by the second theory.)
A certain amount of precision is helpful when thinking about these sorts of things.
You may want to be a little more careful with how you formulate this. Saying that a good idea is one that has good consequences, and a bad idea is one that has bad consequences, doesn’t invite regress… it may be that you have a different mechanism for evaluating whether a consequence is good/bad than you do for evaluating whether an idea is good/bad.
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A certain amount of precision is helpful when thinking about these sorts of things.
If you reread the sentence in which I discuss a regress, you will notice it begins with “if” and says that a certain method would result in a regress, the point being you have to do something else. So it was your mistake.
That is not what I meant by consequentialism, and I agree that that theory entails an infinite regress. The theory I was referring to, which is the first google result for consequentialism, states that actions should be judged by their consequences.
That theory is bad too. For one thing, you might do something really dumb—say, shoot at a cop—and the consequence might be something good, e.g. you might accidentally hit the robber behind him who was about to kill him. you might end up declared a hero.
For another thing, “judge by consequences” does not answer the question of what are good or bad consequences. It tells us almost nothing. The only content is don’t judge by anything else. Why not? Beats me.
If you mean judge by rationally expected consequences, or something like that, you could drop the first objection but I still don’t see the use of it. If you merely want to exclude mysticism I think we can do that with a lighter restriction.
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.
Yes Popper is non-consequentialist.
Consequentialism is a bad theory. It says ideas should be evaluated by their consequences (only). This does not address the question of how to determine what are good or bad consequences.
If you try to evaluate methods of determining what are good or bad consequences, by their consequences, you’ll end up with serious regress problems. If you don’t, you’ll have to introduce something other than consequences.
You may want to be a little more careful with how you formulate this. Saying that a good idea is one that has good consequences, and a bad idea is one that has bad consequences, doesn’t invite regress… it may be that you have a different mechanism for evaluating whether a consequence is good/bad than you do for evaluating whether an idea is good/bad.
For example, I might assert that a consequence is good if it makes me happy, and bad if it makes me unhappy. (I don’t in fact assert this.) I would then conclude that an idea is good if its consequences make me happy, and bad if its consequences make me unhappy. No regress involved.
(And note that this is different from saying that an idea is good if the idea makes me happy. If it turns out that the idea “I could drink drain cleaner” makes me happy, but that actually drinking drain cleaner makes me unhappy, then it’s a bad idea by the first theory but a good idea by the second theory.)
A certain amount of precision is helpful when thinking about these sorts of things.
If you reread the sentence in which I discuss a regress, you will notice it begins with “if” and says that a certain method would result in a regress, the point being you have to do something else. So it was your mistake.
That is not what I meant by consequentialism, and I agree that that theory entails an infinite regress. The theory I was referring to, which is the first google result for consequentialism, states that actions should be judged by their consequences.
That theory is bad too. For one thing, you might do something really dumb—say, shoot at a cop—and the consequence might be something good, e.g. you might accidentally hit the robber behind him who was about to kill him. you might end up declared a hero.
For another thing, “judge by consequences” does not answer the question of what are good or bad consequences. It tells us almost nothing. The only content is don’t judge by anything else. Why not? Beats me.
If you mean judge by rationally expected consequences, or something like that, you could drop the first objection but I still don’t see the use of it. If you merely want to exclude mysticism I think we can do that with a lighter restriction.
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.