I really do believe that consequentialism is the way to a correct theory of ethics, and I think that it leads to feminism, given our current situation.
So you believe that encouraging people to act in accordance with feminism will lead to maximizing utility? Because evolutionary psychology/PUA has something to say about this claim.
It’s worth noting that our concepts of feminism probably differ from one another at least slightly—really these days feminism is just an umbrella term for a big splintered tree graph of ideologies and social theories and ethical theories and literary perspectives… Half of the time they disagree with one another, and there’s a lot of variance when it comes to sanity.
But, broadly, yes. None of the terms of my utility function are labeled ‘feminism’, but when I ‘run the numbers’ I find that the function tends to endorse courses of action and social heuristics that are roughly functionally equivalent to some strains of feminism. I have read some of the ev-psych/PUA literature and I found it unconvincing for a variety of specific reasons and some overarching general ones.
That might correlate with utility or happiness, but that’s an empirical question, not a given.
No one is claiming it is.
Edit: The argument is not “evolution has selected us for X, therefore we should do X”. It’s “evolution has selected as for X, therefore humans have property Y, therefore organizing society according to principal Z leads to more efficient utility generation.”
So you believe that encouraging people to act in accordance with feminism will lead to maximizing utility? Because evolutionary psychology/PUA has something to say about this claim.
It’s worth noting that our concepts of feminism probably differ from one another at least slightly—really these days feminism is just an umbrella term for a big splintered tree graph of ideologies and social theories and ethical theories and literary perspectives… Half of the time they disagree with one another, and there’s a lot of variance when it comes to sanity.
But, broadly, yes. None of the terms of my utility function are labeled ‘feminism’, but when I ‘run the numbers’ I find that the function tends to endorse courses of action and social heuristics that are roughly functionally equivalent to some strains of feminism. I have read some of the ev-psych/PUA literature and I found it unconvincing for a variety of specific reasons and some overarching general ones.
Also, I agree with Prismattic.
Evolution has selected for successful reproduction. That might correlate with utility or happiness, but that’s an empirical question, not a given.
No one is claiming it is.
Edit: The argument is not “evolution has selected us for X, therefore we should do X”. It’s “evolution has selected as for X, therefore humans have property Y, therefore organizing society according to principal Z leads to more efficient utility generation.”