Following Ryan's lead, I'll introduce myself.

I live in Oxford and work in one of the publishing companies, though for the time being I'll keep my identity nominally private beyond that.

Like Ryan, I'm very much a hedonistic (rather than preference) utilitarian, and philosophically I like to keep things as parsimonious as possible - I'm also a reductionist and don't see any substantial distinction between, for example, rule and act util. I'm interested in utilitarian theory insofar as it remains logical/empirical rather than intuitionistic.

I'd gladly give up on all the theory, though, to convey to a few critics the sense that all utilitarianism necessarily entails is the desire to make the cosmos a nicer place to live in.* So by definition, anyone who thinks utilitarianism somehow false would be at least equally as content for the world to be much gloomier than it could be. It needn't be a complicated idea, or even a 'philosophy', per se - rather, it's a way to give clarity and direction to every non-selfish thought you have.

The last thing I'll say about util here is that I'm a fan of (the little I've read of) Alastair Norcross's writings. Specifically, I like his claim that utilitarianism is merely a signpost to better and worse actions, rather than a line in the sand on one side of which everything is Morally Wrong and the other side of which it's Right.

This means by my own standards, I'm not a spectacularly good person - I could probably never be, although I could probably do better than I am at the moment. But like any ideal goal, I work towards it as best I can given limited resources (in this case a psychological limit on the proportionate value I can place on everyone else's wellbeing compared to my own.)

Outside work, I read pop science and collect martial arts. Think I've tried about 40 by now. But I'd rather discuss hobbies in suitable threads, where I only bore the people who are interested...




*This sentence and the one after it not rigorously clarified to the nth degree, but that's the whole point. I'll do that elsewhere.

Hi Jinksy. Lovely intro post

I may be heading outside your main areas of interest, but I would like to press you on your reductionism:
> Subatomic physics seems to indicate that matter isn’t continuous (matter can’t be divided into smaller particles forever). If you find a small enough particle, you probably can’t find any smaller particle causing it to be the way it is. Does that bother you?
> Lots of people say that consciousness is an emergent property. They say that you could never predict from the sum of the parts of a brain that a brain could cause conscious experience. How do you explain consciousness?
> If matter and consciousness probably aren’t infinitely divisible – they can occur without a reason, does all ethics need to have a rational explanation? Is it a problem to create laws about justice and liberty and say that they are true without giving a reason?

After spending 5 solid hours today trying to read Japanese, these answers aren't going to be in-depth. But if you're not satisfied with them they'll probably need their own thread anyway.

RyanCarey wrote:> Subatomic physics seems to indicate that matter isn’t continuous (matter can’t be divided into smaller particles forever). If you find a small enough particle, you probably can’t find any smaller particle causing it to be the way it is. Does that bother you?

I can't see any reason why it should ... reductionism as I see it, is merely the epistemological method of explaining things in (and only in) terms of the interaction of their constituents. If they have no constituents we can't explain them, which might be frustrating, but so is not being able to fly. The universe doesn't behave the way we want it to, unfortunately/fortunately.

> Lots of people say that consciousness is an emergent property. They say that you could never predict from the sum of the parts of a brain that a brain could cause conscious experience. How do you explain consciousness?

Superficially at least, it comes down to clashing assertions - I assert knowledge requires parsimony, we can see that matter exists and that consciousness depends upon it, therefore consciousness is a product of matter. Dualists, as far as I understand, don't necessarily reject the parsimony principle, but they assert (something to the effect) that consciousness is self-evidently impossible to link with matter. Without going into much more detail I can't think of much more to say

... except that I'm bemused by anyone who claims to know what functions a massively complicated system that we've barely begun to understood can perform - especially to know so much that they can categorically rule out it producing an effect that we already know exists (and that's intrinsically linked with it).

> If matter and consciousness probably aren’t infinitely divisible – they can occur without a reason, does all ethics need to have a rational explanation? Is it a problem to create laws about justice and liberty and say that they are true without giving a reason?

I believe in matter/energy because it seems practically impossible for me not to. Ditto consciousness and states of emotion that are better or worse (for me) - put me in a room with a skilled torturer, and I'll quickly renounce any residual scepticism about that. Ethics in general and justice and liberty in particular are usually poorly defined, and I've yet to hear any clear definition of them that gave any reason to suppose they 'existed' (or any other pertinent verb you care to apply).

To me, utilitarianism is just the recognition that, while there's no universal imperative to maximise anyone else's welfare, there's no imperative to maximise my own, either (or any absolute distinction between mine and other people's, come to that). Evolution broke when it gave me intelligence - it left me with thoughts that weren't all devoted to personal survival and reproduction. Util, as I said above, is just a reference to the only thing I can do with those thoughts besides transmute them back into selfishness.

Jinksy wrote:Evolution broke when it gave me intelligence - it left me with thoughts that weren't all devoted to personal survival and reproduction.

Speak for yourself. I think you'd be surprised at how many men's thoughts are entirely devoted to reproduction, even if they don't think of it as such

Thanks for the reply, Jinksy,

TraderJoe wrote:

Jinksy wrote:Evolution broke when it gave me intelligence - it left me with thoughts that weren't all devoted to personal survival and reproduction.

Speak for yourself. I think you'd be surprised at how many men's thoughts are entirely devoted to reproduction, even if they don't think of it as such

Yeah well almost everything we do can be traced back to reproduction. Accumulating material wealth, trying to 'fit in'. Pleasure often correlates with moments when we did something evolutionarily favourable. Anxiety can mean 'don't lose your genome'!. Sadness can mean 'give this person some support'. etc.

TraderJoe wrote:Speak for yourself. I think you'd be surprised at how many men's thoughts are entirely devoted to reproduction, even if they don't think of it as such

It's pretty obvious that our physiology is given over to reproduction and that we developed intelligence because it assisted the process, and that our physiology has a hefty effect on our thoughts. But that doesn't imply that our thoughts are entirely given over to reproduction - other things affect our thoughts too. We frequently put our lives at unnecessary risk, and/or fail to maximise our reproductive chances.

Claiming that all such actions are driven by the logic of reproduction is dangerously close to being an empty statement - you can either allow someone to falsify it by saying things like 'I didn't believe it would increase my survival or reproductive prospects when I took my vow of chastity (and I still don't)', or you can define it as being true, thus eliminating all information from the claim.

Similarly, even insofar as it's true that our actions stem from reproductive/survival concerns, it doesn't mean it's not useful to distinguish between cases where my actions are actually increasing my s/r chances and those where they're obviously failing to (if I give money to charity without telling anyone, for eg). In the latter cases, evolution has obviously broken. (just to clarify, I mean 'erred' by broken, not 'ceased and lost its influence')

Lintillus, it sounds like you're nearing a broad explanation of freedom. While I haven't read it, I get the feeling you're putting forward an ide similar to Freedom Evolves by Daniel Dennett.

Wikipedia says:Dennett's stance on free will is compatibilism with an evolutionary twist – the view that, although in the strict physical sense our actions are pre-determined, we can still be free in all the ways that matter, because of the abilities we evolved. Free will, seen this way, is about freedom to make decisions without duress, as opposed to an impossible and unnecessary freedom from causality itself.

Separate point: I'd be interested in if you explain the idea of feelings - so crucial to classical utilitarianism - in the same way as freedom.