Your characterization of Reductive Utility matches very well my own experience in philosophical discussion about utilitarianism. Most of my interlocutors object that I am proposing a reductive utility notion which suffers from incomputability (which is essentially how Anscombe dismissed it all in one paragraph, putting generations of philosophers pitted eternally against any form of consequentialism).
However, I always thought it was obvious that one need not believe that objects and moral thinking must be derived from ever lower levels of world states.
What do you think are the downstream effects of holding Reductive Utility Function theory?
I’m thinking the social effects of RUF is more compartmentalization of domains because from an agent perspective their continuity is incomputable, does that make sense?
Thank you for this.
Your characterization of Reductive Utility matches very well my own experience in philosophical discussion about utilitarianism. Most of my interlocutors object that I am proposing a reductive utility notion which suffers from incomputability (which is essentially how Anscombe dismissed it all in one paragraph, putting generations of philosophers pitted eternally against any form of consequentialism).
However, I always thought it was obvious that one need not believe that objects and moral thinking must be derived from ever lower levels of world states.
What do you think are the downstream effects of holding Reductive Utility Function theory?
I’m thinking the social effects of RUF is more compartmentalization of domains because from an agent perspective their continuity is incomputable, does that make sense?