Everyone’s being silly. Consequentialism maximizes the expected utility of the world. Said understands “world” to mean “universe configuration history”. The others understand “world” to mean “universe configuration”.
Consequentialism maximizes the expected utility of the world.
Consequentialist moral frameworks do not require the agent to have[1] a utility function. Without a utility function, there is no “expected utility”.
In general, I would advise avoiding such “technical-language” rephrasings of standard definitions; they often (such as here) create inaccuracies where there were none.
Said understands “world” to mean “universe configuration history”. The others understand “world” to mean “universe configuration”.
Unless you’re positing a last-Thursdayist sort of scenario where we arrive at some universe configuration “synthetically” (i.e., by divine fiat, rather than by the universe evolving into the configuration “naturally”), this distinction is illusory. Barring such bizarre, wholly hypothetical scenarios, you cannot get to a state where, for instance, people remember an event happening, there’s records and other evidence of the event happening, etc., without that event actually having happened.
Said, your “[1]” is not a link.
It wasn’t meant to be a link, it was meant to be a footnote reference (as in this comment); however, I seem to have forgotten to add the actual footnote, and now I don’t remember what it was supposed to be… perhaps something about so-called “normalizing assumptions”? Well, it’s not critical.
[1] Here “have” should be taken to mean “have preferences that, due to obeying certain axioms, may be transformed into”.
I only meant to unpack consequentialism’s definition in order to get a handle on the “world” term. I’m fine with “Consequentialism chooses actions based on their consequences on the world.”.
The distinction is relevant for, for example, whether to care about an AI simulating humans in detail in order to figure out their preferences.
Quantum physics combines amplitudes of equal universe configurations regardless of their history. A quantum computer could arrive in the same state through different paths, some of which had it run morally relevant algorithms.
Even if the distinction is illusory, it seems to be the crux of everyone’s disagreement.
Everyone’s being silly. Consequentialism maximizes the expected utility of the world. Said understands “world” to mean “universe configuration history”. The others understand “world” to mean “universe configuration”.
Said, your “[1]” is not a link.
Consequentialist moral frameworks do not require the agent to have[1] a utility function. Without a utility function, there is no “expected utility”.
In general, I would advise avoiding such “technical-language” rephrasings of standard definitions; they often (such as here) create inaccuracies where there were none.
Unless you’re positing a last-Thursdayist sort of scenario where we arrive at some universe configuration “synthetically” (i.e., by divine fiat, rather than by the universe evolving into the configuration “naturally”), this distinction is illusory. Barring such bizarre, wholly hypothetical scenarios, you cannot get to a state where, for instance, people remember an event happening, there’s records and other evidence of the event happening, etc., without that event actually having happened.
It wasn’t meant to be a link, it was meant to be a footnote reference (as in this comment); however, I seem to have forgotten to add the actual footnote, and now I don’t remember what it was supposed to be… perhaps something about so-called “normalizing assumptions”? Well, it’s not critical.
[1] Here “have” should be taken to mean “have preferences that, due to obeying certain axioms, may be transformed into”.
I only meant to unpack consequentialism’s definition in order to get a handle on the “world” term. I’m fine with “Consequentialism chooses actions based on their consequences on the world.”.
The distinction is relevant for, for example, whether to care about an AI simulating humans in detail in order to figure out their preferences.
Quantum physics combines amplitudes of equal universe configurations regardless of their history. A quantum computer could arrive in the same state through different paths, some of which had it run morally relevant algorithms.
Even if the distinction is illusory, it seems to be the crux of everyone’s disagreement.