I feel like ‘valuism’ is redefining utilitarianism, and the contrasts to utilitarianism don’t seem very convincing. For instance, you define valuism as noticing what you intrinsically value and trying to take effective action to increase that. This seems identical to a utilitarian whose utility function is composed of what they intrinsically value.
I think you might be defining utilitarianism such that they are only allowed to care about one thing? Which is sort of true, in that utilitarianism generally advocates converting everything into a common scale, but that common scale can measure multiple things. My utility function includes happiness, suffering, beauty, and curiosity as terms. This is totally fine, and a normal part of utilitarian discourse. Most utilitarians I’ve talked to are total preference utilitarians, I’ve never met a pure hedonistic utilitarian.
Likewise, I’m allowed to maintain my happiness and mental health as an instrumental goal for maximizing utility. This doesn’t mean that utilitarianism is wrong, it just means we can’t pretend we can be utility maximizing soul-less robots. I feel like there is a post on folks realizing this at least every few months. Which makes sense! It’s an important realization!
Also, utilitarianism also doesn’t need objective morality any more than any other moral philosophy, so I didn’t understand your objection there.
You’re the one who’s redefining utilitarianism- which is commonly defined as maximization of happiness and well-being of conscious beings. You can consider integrating other terminal values into what you’d like to do, but you’re not really discussing utilitarianism at that point, as it’s commonly used. For instance, Greenberg points to truth as a potential terminal value, which would be at odds with utilitarianism as it’s typically used.
I think Singer is a hedonic utilitarian for what it’s worth, and I think I subscribe to it while acknowledging that weighing the degrees of positive and negatively subjective experiences of many kinds is daunting.
As for having other instrumental values (which is why I don’t really think the “burnout” argument is very good as against utilitarianism, I agree with you on that one.
I agree that ‘utilitarianism’ often gets elided into meaning a variation of hedonic utilitarianism. I would like to hold philosophical discourse to a higher bar. In particular, once someone mentions hedonic utilitarianism, I’m going to hold them to the standard of separating out hedonic utilitarianism and preference utilitarianism, for example.
I agree hedonic utilitarians exist. I’m just saying the utilitarians I’ve talked to always add more terms than pleasure and suffering to their utility function. Most are preference utilitarians.
Preference utilitarianism and valuism don’t have much in common.
Preference utilitarianism: maximize the interests/preferences of all beings impartially.
First, preferences and intrinsic values are not the same thing. For instance, you may have a preference to eat Cheetos over eating nachos, but that doesn’t mean you intrinsically value eating Cheetos or that eating Cheetos necessarily gets you more of what you intrinsically value than eating nachos will. Human choice is driven by a lot of factors other than just intrinsic values (though intrinsic values play a role).
Second, preference utilitarianism is not about your own preferences, it’s about the preferences of all beings impartially.
I feel like ‘valuism’ is redefining utilitarianism, and the contrasts to utilitarianism don’t seem very convincing. For instance, you define valuism as noticing what you intrinsically value and trying to take effective action to increase that. This seems identical to a utilitarian whose utility function is composed of what they intrinsically value.
I think you might be defining utilitarianism such that they are only allowed to care about one thing? Which is sort of true, in that utilitarianism generally advocates converting everything into a common scale, but that common scale can measure multiple things. My utility function includes happiness, suffering, beauty, and curiosity as terms. This is totally fine, and a normal part of utilitarian discourse. Most utilitarians I’ve talked to are total preference utilitarians, I’ve never met a pure hedonistic utilitarian.
Likewise, I’m allowed to maintain my happiness and mental health as an instrumental goal for maximizing utility. This doesn’t mean that utilitarianism is wrong, it just means we can’t pretend we can be utility maximizing soul-less robots. I feel like there is a post on folks realizing this at least every few months. Which makes sense! It’s an important realization!
Also, utilitarianism also doesn’t need objective morality any more than any other moral philosophy, so I didn’t understand your objection there.
You’re the one who’s redefining utilitarianism- which is commonly defined as maximization of happiness and well-being of conscious beings. You can consider integrating other terminal values into what you’d like to do, but you’re not really discussing utilitarianism at that point, as it’s commonly used. For instance, Greenberg points to truth as a potential terminal value, which would be at odds with utilitarianism as it’s typically used.
I think Singer is a hedonic utilitarian for what it’s worth, and I think I subscribe to it while acknowledging that weighing the degrees of positive and negatively subjective experiences of many kinds is daunting.
As for having other instrumental values (which is why I don’t really think the “burnout” argument is very good as against utilitarianism, I agree with you on that one.
I agree that ‘utilitarianism’ often gets elided into meaning a variation of hedonic utilitarianism. I would like to hold philosophical discourse to a higher bar. In particular, once someone mentions hedonic utilitarianism, I’m going to hold them to the standard of separating out hedonic utilitarianism and preference utilitarianism, for example.
I agree hedonic utilitarians exist. I’m just saying the utilitarians I’ve talked to always add more terms than pleasure and suffering to their utility function. Most are preference utilitarians.
Preference utilitarianism and valuism don’t have much in common.
Preference utilitarianism: maximize the interests/preferences of all beings impartially.
First, preferences and intrinsic values are not the same thing. For instance, you may have a preference to eat Cheetos over eating nachos, but that doesn’t mean you intrinsically value eating Cheetos or that eating Cheetos necessarily gets you more of what you intrinsically value than eating nachos will. Human choice is driven by a lot of factors other than just intrinsic values (though intrinsic values play a role).
Second, preference utilitarianism is not about your own preferences, it’s about the preferences of all beings impartially.