Thanks! Iâll just respond re: completeness for now.
When we ask âwhy should we maximize EV,â weâre interested in the reasons for our choices. Recognizing that Iâm forced by reality to either donate or not-donate doesnât help me answer whether itâs rational to strictly prefer donating, strictly prefer not-donating, be precisely indifferent, or none of the above.
Incomplete preferences have at least one qualitatively different property from complete ones, described here, and reality doesnât force you to violate this property.
Not that youâre claiming this directly, but just to flag, because in my experience people often conflate these things: Even if in some sense your all-things-considered preferences need to be complete, this doesnât mean your preferences w.r.t. your first-order axiology need to be complete. For example, take the donation case. You might be very sympathetic to a total utilitarian axiology, but when deciding whether to donate, your evaluation of the total utilitarian betterness-under-uncertainty of one option vs. another doesnât need to be complete. You might, say, just rule out options that are stochastically dominated w.r.t. total utility, and then decide among the remaining options based on non-consequentialist considerations. (More on this idea here.)
2. Incomplete preferences have at least one qualitatively different property from complete ones, described here, and reality doesnât force you to violate this property.
I read the section you linked, and I understand preferential gaps are the property of incomplete preferences which you are referring to. I do not think preferential gaps make sense in principle. If one was exactly indifferent between 2 outcomes, I believe any improvement/âworsening of one of them must make one prefer one of the outcomes over the other. At the same time, if one is roughly indifferent between 2 outcomes, a sufficiently small improvement/âworsening of one of them will still lead to one being practically indifferent between them. For example, although I think i) 1 $ plus a chance of 10^-100 of 1 $ is clearly better than ii) 1 $, I am practically indifferent between i) and ii), because the value of 10^-100 $ is negligible.
3. Not that youâre claiming this directly, but just to flag, because in my experience people often conflate these things: Even if in some sense your all-things-considered preferences need to be complete, this doesnât mean your preferences w.r.t. your first-order axiology need to be complete.
Both are complete for me, as I fully endorse expectational total hedonistic utilitarianism (ETHU) in principle. In practice, I think it is useful to rely on heuristics from other moral theories to make better decisions under ETHU. I believe the categorical imperative is a great one, for example, although it is very central to deontology.
To be clear, âpreferential gapâ in the linked article just means incomplete preferences. The property in question is insensitivity to mild sweetening.
If one was exactly indifferent between 2 outcomes, I believe any improvement/âworsening of one of them must make one prefer one of the outcomes over the other
But thatâs exactly the point â incompleteness is not equivalent to indifference, because when you have an incomplete preference between 2 outcomes itâs not the case that a mild improvement/âworsening makes you have a strict preference. I donât understand what you think doesnât âmake sense in principleâ about insensitivity to mild sweetening.
I fully endorse expectational total hedonistic utilitarianism (ETHU) in principle
As in youâre 100% certain, and wouldnât put weight on other considerations even as a tiebreaker? That seems extreme. (If, say, you became convinced all your options were incomparable from an ETHU perspective because of cluelessness, you would presumably still all-things-considered-prefer not to do something that injures yourself for no reason.)
As in youâre 100% certain, and wouldnât put weight on other considerations even as a tiebreaker?
Yes.
(If, say, you became convinced all your options were incomparable from an ETHU perspective because of cluelessness, you would presumably still all-things-considered-prefer not to do something that injures yourself for no reason.)
Injuring myself can very easily be assessed under ETHU. It directly affects my mental states, and those of others via decreasing my productivity.
Thanks! Iâll just respond re: completeness for now.
When we ask âwhy should we maximize EV,â weâre interested in the reasons for our choices. Recognizing that Iâm forced by reality to either donate or not-donate doesnât help me answer whether itâs rational to strictly prefer donating, strictly prefer not-donating, be precisely indifferent, or none of the above.
Incomplete preferences have at least one qualitatively different property from complete ones, described here, and reality doesnât force you to violate this property.
Not that youâre claiming this directly, but just to flag, because in my experience people often conflate these things: Even if in some sense your all-things-considered preferences need to be complete, this doesnât mean your preferences w.r.t. your first-order axiology need to be complete. For example, take the donation case. You might be very sympathetic to a total utilitarian axiology, but when deciding whether to donate, your evaluation of the total utilitarian betterness-under-uncertainty of one option vs. another doesnât need to be complete. You might, say, just rule out options that are stochastically dominated w.r.t. total utility, and then decide among the remaining options based on non-consequentialist considerations. (More on this idea here.)
Thanks, Anthony.
I read the section you linked, and I understand preferential gaps are the property of incomplete preferences which you are referring to. I do not think preferential gaps make sense in principle. If one was exactly indifferent between 2 outcomes, I believe any improvement/âworsening of one of them must make one prefer one of the outcomes over the other. At the same time, if one is roughly indifferent between 2 outcomes, a sufficiently small improvement/âworsening of one of them will still lead to one being practically indifferent between them. For example, although I think i) 1 $ plus a chance of 10^-100 of 1 $ is clearly better than ii) 1 $, I am practically indifferent between i) and ii), because the value of 10^-100 $ is negligible.
Both are complete for me, as I fully endorse expectational total hedonistic utilitarianism (ETHU) in principle. In practice, I think it is useful to rely on heuristics from other moral theories to make better decisions under ETHU. I believe the categorical imperative is a great one, for example, although it is very central to deontology.
To be clear, âpreferential gapâ in the linked article just means incomplete preferences. The property in question is insensitivity to mild sweetening.
But thatâs exactly the point â incompleteness is not equivalent to indifference, because when you have an incomplete preference between 2 outcomes itâs not the case that a mild improvement/âworsening makes you have a strict preference. I donât understand what you think doesnât âmake sense in principleâ about insensitivity to mild sweetening.
As in youâre 100% certain, and wouldnât put weight on other considerations even as a tiebreaker? That seems extreme. (If, say, you became convinced all your options were incomparable from an ETHU perspective because of cluelessness, you would presumably still all-things-considered-prefer not to do something that injures yourself for no reason.)
Yes.
Injuring myself can very easily be assessed under ETHU. It directly affects my mental states, and those of others via decreasing my productivity.