“We can talk, individually, about each of a zillion little choice vectors one by one; but we don’t know where they push in combination, what they are doing, what explains them; what they represent. We can see ourselves making any given specific choice. But we can’t see ourselves whole.”
I love the sentiment you express here. I engage in moral reasoning as an attempt to see (and indeed construct) myself whole. With that said, I’m unsure how much “self-knowledge” we actually lose by adopting messy pluralism. I want to look at three components of the quote, and explain how I see myself whole in response t
A. What are my little choice vectors doing?
At an abstract level, my choice vectors are pushing me towards actions I can genuinely stand behind. They’re pushing me towards actions which, if I reflect, I can prescribe for all agents with my fuzzy, inchoate values in the decision-context I find myself.
B. What explains my little choice vectors?
Well, there’ll be some causal stories of the ordinary, standard type. But you know this. I take it that, through this question, you’re asking: what rationalizes my choices? What makes it the case that I am acting agentically, and with responsibility? Thus the final question.
C. What do my choice vectors represent?
In the ideal case, they represent something like my answer in (A): that is, they represent the actions I’d prescribe for all agents with my fuzzy, inchoate values in my decision-context.
You might reasonably point out that this response is largely uninformative. What do my fuzzy, inchoate values actually represent?
To see myself whole is to see myself as I actually am. That means, yes, seeing myself as someone who is genuinely committed to certain principles, and seeing myself as someone who can be surprised by what’s entailed by my principles. But to see myself honestly is also to see myself as someone in the process of becoming more whole; it’s to see myself as someone who has not yet (fully, at least) worked themselves out.
So, what do my choice vectors represent? They represent a desire to alleviate the distress of those who are (and will be) suffering. They represent a desire to face up to the vast scale of the world, and a desire to face up to the fact that the world may not be how I wish it to be. And my choice vectors represent a desire to “look again” at morality, and to allow for the possibility that there’s something I might have missed.
D. Concluding messy pluralism
I think that acknowledging some degree of messy pluralism is part of what allows me to see myself whole. It allows me to encounter my values (my heart, my sentiment, whatever) as they actually are, rather than the values of some hypothetical, more precisely systematized offshoot of me.
I agree that, to see oneself whole, one should look at the totality of one’s choices and principles, and then ask “wait, what exactly is going on here?”. Indeed, I think that this is particularly important to do when certain tensions in our principles or actions are brought to light.
That said, I’m skeptical of how much more “self-knowledge” the utilitarian framework actually provides. The utilitarian can say, of course, that they are a force for “total utility”. But what does this mean, exactly? What’s the mapping between between valenced experiential states and welfare numbers, and, indeed, what justifies any particular mapping?
When we get to what exactly we mean by total utility, I do become unsure about what the utilitarian is “a force” for. I think this is clear in population axiology and infinite ethics. Of course, there are more humdrum cases when this is clearer (though so too for the right kind of pluralist), and we may hope for some clever workaround in infinite cases.
But, insofar as utilitarians hope for and try to construct workarounds to (e.g.) cases in infinite ethics, then I think we’ve shown that real-life utilitarians are primarily a force for something more fuzzy and foundational than straightforward utilitarianism. This force, after all, is what motivates utilitarians to reject claims of equal welfare between (some) infinite worlds. At bottom, I think, the utilitarian doesn’t really have much more of a sense of what “force” they are than (at least some) pluralists — they’re primarily using “total utility” as a placeholder for a set of more complicated sentiments.
This force is not what motivates this utilitarian. Rather, we should act as if we are in a finite world, and even in an infinite world we should understand that utilitarianism is not about maximising some abstract utility function or number in the sky, but about improving the conscious experiences of sentient beings. Infinities don’t change the fact that I can reduce the suffering of the person in front of me, or the sentient being on the other side of the world, or the fact that this is good for them. And there are good practical, utilitarian reasons not to spend one’s time focusing on other potential worlds.
(Second Comment)
2. On seeing ourselves whole
You say, in response to messy pluralism:
I love the sentiment you express here. I engage in moral reasoning as an attempt to see (and indeed construct) myself whole. With that said, I’m unsure how much “self-knowledge” we actually lose by adopting messy pluralism. I want to look at three components of the quote, and explain how I see myself whole in response t
A. What are my little choice vectors doing?
At an abstract level, my choice vectors are pushing me towards actions I can genuinely stand behind. They’re pushing me towards actions which, if I reflect, I can prescribe for all agents with my fuzzy, inchoate values in the decision-context I find myself.
B. What explains my little choice vectors?
Well, there’ll be some causal stories of the ordinary, standard type. But you know this. I take it that, through this question, you’re asking: what rationalizes my choices? What makes it the case that I am acting agentically, and with responsibility? Thus the final question.
C. What do my choice vectors represent?
In the ideal case, they represent something like my answer in (A): that is, they represent the actions I’d prescribe for all agents with my fuzzy, inchoate values in my decision-context.
You might reasonably point out that this response is largely uninformative. What do my fuzzy, inchoate values actually represent?
To see myself whole is to see myself as I actually am. That means, yes, seeing myself as someone who is genuinely committed to certain principles, and seeing myself as someone who can be surprised by what’s entailed by my principles. But to see myself honestly is also to see myself as someone in the process of becoming more whole; it’s to see myself as someone who has not yet (fully, at least) worked themselves out.
So, what do my choice vectors represent? They represent a desire to alleviate the distress of those who are (and will be) suffering. They represent a desire to face up to the vast scale of the world, and a desire to face up to the fact that the world may not be how I wish it to be. And my choice vectors represent a desire to “look again” at morality, and to allow for the possibility that there’s something I might have missed.
D. Concluding messy pluralism
I think that acknowledging some degree of messy pluralism is part of what allows me to see myself whole. It allows me to encounter my values (my heart, my sentiment, whatever) as they actually are, rather than the values of some hypothetical, more precisely systematized offshoot of me.
I agree that, to see oneself whole, one should look at the totality of one’s choices and principles, and then ask “wait, what exactly is going on here?”. Indeed, I think that this is particularly important to do when certain tensions in our principles or actions are brought to light.
That said, I’m skeptical of how much more “self-knowledge” the utilitarian framework actually provides. The utilitarian can say, of course, that they are a force for “total utility”. But what does this mean, exactly? What’s the mapping between between valenced experiential states and welfare numbers, and, indeed, what justifies any particular mapping?
When we get to what exactly we mean by total utility, I do become unsure about what the utilitarian is “a force” for. I think this is clear in population axiology and infinite ethics. Of course, there are more humdrum cases when this is clearer (though so too for the right kind of pluralist), and we may hope for some clever workaround in infinite cases.
But, insofar as utilitarians hope for and try to construct workarounds to (e.g.) cases in infinite ethics, then I think we’ve shown that real-life utilitarians are primarily a force for something more fuzzy and foundational than straightforward utilitarianism. This force, after all, is what motivates utilitarians to reject claims of equal welfare between (some) infinite worlds. At bottom, I think, the utilitarian doesn’t really have much more of a sense of what “force” they are than (at least some) pluralists — they’re primarily using “total utility” as a placeholder for a set of more complicated sentiments.
This force is not what motivates this utilitarian. Rather, we should act as if we are in a finite world, and even in an infinite world we should understand that utilitarianism is not about maximising some abstract utility function or number in the sky, but about improving the conscious experiences of sentient beings. Infinities don’t change the fact that I can reduce the suffering of the person in front of me, or the sentient being on the other side of the world, or the fact that this is good for them. And there are good practical, utilitarian reasons not to spend one’s time focusing on other potential worlds.