I’ll reply to the other comment later as I understand it less well immediately, but to this one, and now that I think about it, mainly just point 1 for now: I think this is having to do with with distinctions I already tried to deal with in the text.
If impartial consequentialism is defined as trying to maximise total expected value, then it is different from being motivated only by some subset of expected value, no matter what the motivation for doing the latter is. Under this definition of impartial consequentialism, there’s no solution for what to choose based on impartial consequentialism. I basically said this already.
What I’m saying is that we can be motivated by impartial values, without ever restricting what we value to begin with, and then be forced, by the nature of making choices, into applying the principle only in a limited area, because that’s all we can do. If what I’m saying is right otherwise, consequences we are clueless about are effectively just like things we can’t causally affect at all. So, choosing only based on what we can choose based on is no less impartial than aiming to affect only things that we can affect.
You could say the observation is that even as we find out that we can’t act on our impartial altruistic motivations based on maximising total expected value, that doesn’t mean that having impartial altruistic motivations implies not having any basis to make choices. The limitations we find are themselves a factor in what it’s rational to do based on our values.
As I also pointed out, the point isn’t about how you conceptualise this, anyway—whether as impartial altruism or as otherwise helpful to someone who started from it. But it’s saying something meaningful to say that we can have impartial altruistic motivations and values and still have a rational basis for deciding based on this. Especially, there’s no need to bring in other absolute values like virtue, unless you decide to define “doing what you can from impartial altruistic motivations in some other way than maximising total expected value because you can’t maximise it” as a different value.
I’ll reply to the other comment later as I understand it less well immediately, but to this one, and now that I think about it, mainly just point 1 for now: I think this is having to do with with distinctions I already tried to deal with in the text.
If impartial consequentialism is defined as trying to maximise total expected value, then it is different from being motivated only by some subset of expected value, no matter what the motivation for doing the latter is. Under this definition of impartial consequentialism, there’s no solution for what to choose based on impartial consequentialism. I basically said this already.
What I’m saying is that we can be motivated by impartial values, without ever restricting what we value to begin with, and then be forced, by the nature of making choices, into applying the principle only in a limited area, because that’s all we can do. If what I’m saying is right otherwise, consequences we are clueless about are effectively just like things we can’t causally affect at all. So, choosing only based on what we can choose based on is no less impartial than aiming to affect only things that we can affect.
You could say the observation is that even as we find out that we can’t act on our impartial altruistic motivations based on maximising total expected value, that doesn’t mean that having impartial altruistic motivations implies not having any basis to make choices. The limitations we find are themselves a factor in what it’s rational to do based on our values.
As I also pointed out, the point isn’t about how you conceptualise this, anyway—whether as impartial altruism or as otherwise helpful to someone who started from it. But it’s saying something meaningful to say that we can have impartial altruistic motivations and values and still have a rational basis for deciding based on this. Especially, there’s no need to bring in other absolute values like virtue, unless you decide to define “doing what you can from impartial altruistic motivations in some other way than maximising total expected value because you can’t maximise it” as a different value.