The major split among utilitarians seem to be what utility is, and the two main schools of thought are hedonism and preferentialism.

It seems like most people here are hedonists, though I think most modern utilitarian philosophers are preferentialists. Why are you whatever you are? What are the best arguments for and against the respective positions?

I'm a hedonist. I'm a hedonist because wellbeing (pleasure, happiness or eudaimonia if you prefer) is concrete. We experience it. We enjoy it. It's what makes our lives worth living.

I can see the attractiveness of preferentialism. Most preferentialists seem to be contractarians. That is they believe that ethics is about social contracts. It means that ethics is an arrangement that we would hypothetically agree to. It's a good combo. It involves us all hypothetically meeting, describing what we all want, and making a compromise in which our preferences are treated impartially.

Furthermore, preferentialism can support hedonism and I like that. That is, we can tell which conscious experiences are valuable because they're the ones people say they prefer.

However, one particular aspect of mainstream preferentialism I cannot accept. That is that people's preferences count even when they do not know whether they have come true or not. e.g. people's preferences still count if they are in a coma. It just feels a bit mysterious to me how an unconscious person could be said to have interests. Similarly, I don't see how a person's preferences for the future should count. To use a popular example, if a child wants to one day ride every roller-coaster in the world, should he really be condemned to act out this desire even once he changes his mind? More generally, I don't see how a person should be said to have preferences about something they do not experience. For example, if, unknown to me, someone plays basketball in my front yard, I would prefer they didn't do it. But given that I have no knowledge of the event, it seems hard to see how I should have any authority on the matter. I can't give that sort of preference (a so called external preference) any weight.

I think if we remove these mysterious external preferences, then preference utilitarianism is equivalent to hedonism.

Finally, we should keep this debate in perspective: preference utilitarians and hedonists agree on more topics than we disagree by far. In applied ethics - the only kind of ethics that really matters - the two approaches are virtually aligned. So utilitarians can be one big happy family

RyanCarey wrote:Finally, we should keep this debate in perspective: preference utilitarians and hedonists agree on more topics than we disagree by far. In applied ethics - the only kind of ethics that really matters - the two approaches are virtually aligned. So utilitarians can be one big happy family

I think this is mostly correct, though I can sense some differences. And applied ethics may differ as well, even if people are in agreement of the basics, because of different views as to what will maximize utility. The main reason I made this thread is because I myself have not made up my mind on the issue, and hope for some good arguments.

I am completely against the idea that it matters whether or not what happened jives with your preferences if you don't know it happened. Your preferences are based on you beliefs. Your beliefs about the world are fundamentally flawed. For example, people tend to expect the world to behave like billiard balls, when all our knowledge of quantum physics tells us it doesn't. The only practical definition of beliefs being true is them being useful. For example, phlogiston would be true as it accurately predicts how fire works. Not quite as true as oxygen, but still true. By this definition, if you believe something that doesn't effect you, it's not really true or false. If a tree falls in the forest and I don't here it, it would be totally accurate from my perspective to say it didn't fall

Suppose there's a tree in the forest that I don't want to fall. Suppose it falls, but I'm not there to hear it. Would it be bad? Well, when I think of a tree, I think of some abstract archetype. There's nothing abstract in the forest. Just a very large number of very concrete particles/waves/whatever you want to call them. As such, there's nothing to fall.

Our beliefs aren't built to reflect reality. They're built to predict it. It doesn't matter if the mechanism is completely wrong so long as the result is right. As such, I think it would be more meaningful to judge the truth of a belief based on its ability to make predictions. Suppose someone believes in phlogiston. He uses this belief to predict that burning something would saturate the air with phlogiston, keeping people from being able to fill the air with the phlogiston they exhale. Because of this, he decides that lighting a fire in a cave isn't a good idea. I'd say he's quite correct. Similarly, suppose I believe that tree didn't fall. For all the difference it makes to me, it didn't. It's just as accurate whether or not the tree actually fell, or rather, whether or not it fell to someone actually there.

As for the idea of preferences for things you know about, I think happiness is simpler. If you're happy, you do what you're doing more often. It's just classical conditioning. If you prefer something, you try to make it happen, but what's trying? In order to understand if someone's trying to do something, you'd have to have a very deep understanding of how their brain works. You could ask them, if you happen to speak the same language. I don't believe that karma is that intelligent. It's a physical law, like gravity. It will be simple.

The most rigorous assessment I know if is John Broome's 'Can There Be a Preference-based Utilitarianism?' (it's a PDF) His answer is basically 'no'.

The only recent argument for pref util I've seen is a Katja Grace's blog post, 'Choose Pain-free Utilitarianism'.

I'd say 50% of the times I use reasonings based on preferences, and 50% based on balancing happinesses. I really do not give a strong emphasis on using one over the other. The linguistic root of utilitarianist is to utilize, to use; and so, using one or the other depends on how useful they are in the context given and the consequences it may lead to.

What utilitarism benefits from, that any other non-consequentialist ethics does not, is that the consequences are of utmost importance, so if you see a clearer path to good using one over the other, then go for it. I don't think they're necessarily mutually exclusive.

For that matter, I will sometimes be open to use virtuous or deontological reasonings if I am talking to other people not sympathetic of utilitarism, as long as they do good

Mike Retriever wrote:[U]sing one or the other depends on how useful they are in the context given and the consequences it may lead to.

So, do we use the one where the consequences are more happy people, or more of what people prefer? Or do you use another way of judging consequences altogether?

DanielLC wrote:

Mike Retriever wrote:[U]sing one or the other depends on how useful they are in the context given and the consequences it may lead to.

So, do we use the one where the consequences are more happy people, or more of what people prefer? Or do you use another way of judging consequences altogether?

I think in many situations what a person prefers and what a person is most happy with are equivalent. But we can use a hypothetical controversial situation if you like...

Imagine a case where there's a healthy mentally stable adult happy person with little or no social relationships. There is a medical procedure in which we can stimulate that person's brain with dopamine and endorphines to cause him a state of great happiness (without health repercussions), greater happiness than the one the person will regularly feel. We ask this person if he would be willing to submit himself to this procedure for the rest of his life in a basement jail in total isolation. Through a series of tests and repeated questionnaires we can most confidently say he would not be willing, he would rather not do it, he would prefer not to. Yet we force him after the tests to be isolated in that basement jail, sentenced to be so very happy for the rest of his life.

Which one would you use there. Preference? Or happiness?

Hi Mike Retriever. In my view, it is clear to us all that we should use classical, preferentialist or even deontological reasoning in appropriate circumstances. But, as DanielLC has argued, we do need an ultimate standard. Otherwise, it would be unclear what 'appropriate circumstances' were.

Mike, in the scenario that you describe, I think the preferentialist position has appeal, but I think that's because your wording gives preferentialism an unfair advantage. Allow me to rewrite the original scenario, with the opposite bias:

Mike omitted to write:There is a medical procedure in which we can stimulate that person's brain with neurotransmitters so that that person has an abnormal wish to be jailed. We scan his brain to figure out what degree of wellbeing he will have if he is hailed. We find that his situation will be excruciating. Yet we force him after the tests to be isolated in that basement jail, sentenced to have what he wants for the rest of his life."

These italicised words, as well as some of the ideas in this scenario seem to bias us.

Here's how I think we should settle the dispute:
1. wellbeing and happiness should be regarded to be states of consciousness. Preferences should be regarded to be cognitive states, or thoughts.
2. Classical utilitarians should concede that wellbeing is not always corrupted by thought. Although the pleasures of tasting a good meal or watching TV may be purer, these are not automatically better than wellbeing attained by completing an exam or playing a game of chess
3. We are sometimes biased towards the higher pleasures. Suppose that one is tossing up between two possible activities. One might either spend a day watching television or playing chess. By deliberating over these two choices, we see that these activities consist of equal amounts of pleasure. However, the pleasure involved in chess is a higher variety of pleasure (it involves more cognition). By bringing the lower pleasures in contrast with the higher ones, we recognise the simplicity of viewing television. This will cause us to enjoy chess more then TV. The criterion of sophistication is no less legitimate for the fact that we have created it ourselves.
4. This bias can perpetuate itself. The more we think about sophistication, the more it impacts our enjoyment of activities. So in the basement jail example, one would dread the procedure more the more one deliberated about it.
5. Eventually, the classical utilitarian must bite the bullet. Should it be specified that this procedure will overcome all of this dread, an d should these preferences be recognised as completely independent from conscious life, they should be ignored. They are as good as unconscious.
6. Now that we have reversed our judgement, we can see that it was not as unintuitive as it seemed in the first place, for surely it would be worse for us to be deprived of ecstacy on the basis of an unconscious whim.

Of course RyanCarey! *thumbs up* "It would be worse for us to be deprived of ecstacy on the basis of an unconscious whim." In both your case and my case I would study what an unconscious whim is, seek out professionals on consciousness. Given that I said in my example that "through a series of tests and repeated questionnaires we can most confidently say he would not be willing", I would consider his preference there to not be a whim, so in that case I would be preferential. But in your example, being as you described it (what I think is) an unconscious whim, I would be hedonist.

We do not need an ultimate standard, as you said we would have to consider whims and carefully made choices, as well as some happiness(es) over others; and if you're willing to study the cases, that comes down to each and every individual and society involved in each and every situation. In this discussion, I am not going to choose either hedonism or preferentialism a priori.

And, I do not agree with you that "preferences be recognised as completely independent from conscious life". If you were to devoid preferences completely, entirely, absolutely, from conscious life, then (from my point of view) you would have no preferences: I am willing to give some kind or degree of consciousness to insects, plants, bacteria, or fungi, as minuscule or different to our consciousness as it may be. I mostly do not think of them as conscious, but I would be willing to. I am not speciecist.

Greetings everyone!

I'm a hedonistic utilitarian (and I'm also into philosophy, and I'm female would you believe) and I know this discussion’s been abandoned for a month but I've got quite a few points to make.

There are two main reasons that make hedonistic util seem far more plausible than preference util, to me. Firstly (and this is also an argument for utilitarianism in general, as opposed to other normative theories), if I imagine a world completely devoid of emotion, I find it very hard to see how anything can matter. Whether it's the creation of what someone judges to be beauty, or someone's preference being satisfied, or someone murdering someone else, I can't see that anything would matter if no one is getting any enjoyment/pain out of anything. The second reason is to do with the nature of preferences - I think some are attracted to preference util because preferences initially seem less abstract than emotions, but I don't think they are. Preferences are not just dispositions to choose one thing over another, since I could be dispositioned to having lie-ins while I would really prefer to be making better use of my time (the first article Arepo linked to talks about this - preferences need to be 'informed', made in 'ideal' conditions, not spur-of-the-moment, irrational apparent preferences). No, preferences cannot be reduced simply to empirically observable behaviours; they are fundamentally different and I think they are irreducible full stop. But their nature makes most sense when you think of them in response to something - something intrinsically good e.g. happiness (or at least in response to what the individual perceives as good). It seems to me that the best explanation of what a preference is and why we have them is that they are a response to the perception of something good.

Plus, it seems that the criterion that preference utils have that preferences should be made in ‘ideal’ conditions, where the individual is informed with all the relevant information, would lead us ultimately to abstract from the individual and his situation so much that we may as well be simply asking, “What would be the most reasonable thing to want in this situation?” (to which the answer can only be “whatever is intrinsically good”).

And imagine a situation where two people want only what is best for the other person. If this is a feasible situation then it seems to pose a problem for preference utils, for there is an infinite regress/circularity of preferences (He wants what she wants, which is what he wants, which is what she wants…etc.) that never gain any content; a consequence of this is that they are both just as well off if they are being tortured or are in ecstasy.

A common objection to (total) hedonistic util is that it doesn’t seem right that we have an obligation to create the capacity for feeling happiness and then happiness for it i.e. to create a life that will be more happy than unhappy overall. The parallel objection to (total) preference util is that it doesn’t seem right that we have an obligation to create the capacity for preference satisfaction, i.e. preferences, and then satisfy those preferences (an example often used is that of getting someone addicting to something and then feeding their addiction). To me, the second objection seems far more powerful. If you were to argue that neither objections are relevant because average, not total, utilitarianism is right, then I think the burden of proof is on you to say why, since total utilitarianism seems to follow directly from the intrinsic goodness of utility (i.e. an additional justifying principle is necessary for average utilitarianism, I think).

Another minor point is that it seems much harder to judge what a person’s informed preferences are than it is to judge what makes them happy (for surely there is a lot of information that could change their mind about their voiced preferences); though, of course, this isn’t really an argument against the theory itself, just a difficulty in putting it into practice.

In the second article that Arepo linked to, the author says, “Pain…can be decomposed into a sensation and a desire to not have the sensation. This is demonstrated by the medical condition pain asymbolia and by the effects of morphine for example. In both cases people say that they can still feel the sensation of the pain they had, but they no longer care about it.” But it’s worth reminding ourselves that hedonistic utils do not mean physical pain when they talk of pain, but emotional/mental pain, hence the synonymy and interchangeability with ‘unhappiness’. This sort of pain is not reducible in the way described here and pain asymbolia does not demonstrate that people can no longer care about emotional pain.

So why does preference util get so much support? As I’ve said above, they may seem less abstract and thus easier to handle and less ‘airy-fairy’ at first than emotions. There also seems to be a lot of logic in this view of morality: When I am being selfish, I do what I want; when I am being moral, I universalise and do what everyone wants as much as possible. This sentence looks more logical than starting out with ‘When I am being selfish, I make myself happy’. Preference util can also do away with objections like Nozick’s Experience Machine, while hedonistic util has to bite the bullet.

Mike, I'm in agreement with DanielLC and Ryan r.e. needing an "ultimate standard". You can't have both preferences and happiness. You talk of "a clearer path to good using one over the other", but the preferences/happiness ARE the good. They are not means to an end, so that one can be more useful than the other depending on the circumstances, but they are the end. If you want to argue that they're both ends, then you need some system for weighing them against each other. If you aim for both because you're not sure which one is the real good, well, you gain nothing from alternating - whichever one seems more probable, even if only slightly, to you to be the real good, then you should aim for that one.

And, on a somewhat different note, DanielLC says:

The only practical definition of beliefs being true is them being useful. For example, phlogiston would be true as it accurately predicts how fire works. Not quite as true as oxygen, but still true[…]Suppose someone believes in phlogiston. He uses this belief to predict that burning something would saturate the air with phlogiston, keeping people from being able to fill the air with the phlogiston they exhale. Because of this, he decides that lighting a fire in a cave isn't a good idea. I'd say he's quite correct.

I don't see the point in redefining the word 'true' so that it has this practical use. Why can't we just acknowledge that just because something's true, that doesn't mean it's useful? And similarly distinguish between truth and degress of predictability? By redefining words like 'truth' and 'reality' so that they just mean 'whatever's most useful to believe'/'whatever's true for all I know', we lose the ability to linguistically express our concept (not conception) of 'truth' - and this is surely not very useful, since we need to talk about it sometimes, if only to dsitinguish it from what's practically useful in our lives.
And you’re right when you say that he’s quite correct that lighting a fire in a cave isn’t a good idea; but he’s not correct when he believes in phlogiston.

Another minor point is that it seems much harder to judge what a person’s informed preferences are than it is to judge what makes them happy (for surely there is a lot of information that could change their mind about their voiced preferences); though, of course, this isn’t really an argument against the theory itself, just a difficulty in putting it into practice.

I disagree. You can just ask someone their preferences. To tell if something makes someone happy, you have to actually have them do it, and even then it's difficult to be sure. Also, the universe can't ask them their preferences, and emotions are much simpler than opinions. As such, I think it is an agrument against the theory, and not a difficulty in putting it into practice.

I don't see the point in redefining the word 'true' so that it has this practical use.

Our brains are built to work, not to figure out how the universe "really" works. We use mental models.

Look at it this way. We have mathematical models for a lot of things. One example is harmonic oscillation. This model predicts a mass-spring system. It also predicts certain electrical systems. If you look, you could probably find tons of other things it predicts. The point is, they're not the same thing.

Our mental models are a great deal more complex. We can tell the difference between a spring-mass system and an electrical oscillator, but that's just a matter of detail. You still could, in principle, come up with two different systems that we would make the same model for. It's not just that we have to guess which system it is. The model is everything we think about it. We could make our model more detailed so it only applies to one system, but the fact remains that the system itself is beyond our comprehension. The idea of knowing it is nonsensical. It's not a piece of information. It's a physical object.

LadyMorgana wrote:Greetings everyone!

Glad you made it along LM (<-- Sasha)

I'm a hedonistic utilitarian (and I'm also into philosophy, and I'm female would you believe) and I know this discussion’s been abandoned for a month but I've got quite a few points to make.

I don't think anyone here minds thread necromancy at all - it saves a lot of retreading old ground.

I'm going to duck out of any in-depth discussion of this, since I've promised myself any writing I do on the subject will be on a proper(ish) essay that I can then lazily use as a reference instead of argument (I kind of agree with both you and Daniel)

For now I'll just throw peanuts from the gallery...

If this is a feasible situation then it seems to pose a problem for preference utils, for there is an infinite regress/circularity of preferences (He wants what she wants, which is what he wants, which is what she wants…etc.) that never gain any content; a consequence of this is that they are both just as well off if they are being tortured or are in ecstasy.

I like this argument... don't remember seeing it before.

If you were to argue that neither objections are relevant because average, not total, utilitarianism is right, then I think the burden of proof is on you to say why, since total utilitarianism seems to follow directly from the intrinsic goodness of utility (i.e. an additional justifying principle is necessary for average utilitarianism, I think).

As far as I know, no-one here is an average util - it's just so easy to create situations where it leads to outcomes that clearly hurt everyone involved.

So why does preference util get so much support?

I remember being told (though it might be apocryphal) that it was originally proposed as a way of dealing with HU's 'problems' with murder. The argument goes that if someone has a very strong preference to not die (or even to do things that entail them being alive), then killing them is thwarting a very strong preference. Whereas all HU has to offer as condemnation is the happiness the victim will not suffer having not been alive and (often ignored when I've seen the argument stated casually) the psychic harm of fearing death if we don't try to prevent murders.

Needless to say I'm not persuaded...

DanielLC wrote:I disagree. You can just ask someone their preferences.

This will show you what someone will claim about their preferences, not necessarily what their preferences are. I'm not sure why that's more accurate than asking what would make them feel happy (the latter question being better defined, for a start).

Welcome, Lady Morgana! I hope you have a great time at our forum.
Given that I agree with a great deal of your post, I have little to add to the conversation, except to suggest why preference utilitarianism is popular:
> as Sasha said, it can produce more conventional and palatable conclusions in controversial areas e.g. murder. A different way of putting this is that it has the conventional ethical principles of autonomy and anti-paternalism built in to it.
> as I said, I think it fits with a meta-ethical position, contractualism. Contractualism is the belief that ethics consists of implied contracts formed by real or hypothetical negotiation between individuals. If this is your foundation for ethics, it leads very nicely into consideration of needs and wants but not so nicely into consideration of feelings.

I honestly see no need to stick to one of the two. As RyanCarey said, the reason to use Preferentialism, (but not just Preferentialism, indeed any ethical approach,) is to produce conventional and palatable conclusions. The reason itself for ethics to be, especially applied ethics, is to produce conventional palatable conclusions.

The consequences of a decision affect those who are affected by it. So if those prefer to, or are happier with, using preferential reasoning instead of hedonistic reasoning, then go ahead and give preference to Preferentialism. If instead they prefer to, or are happier with, using hedonistic reasoning instead, then go ahead and make everyone happier with Hedonism.

There is no need to demand and force a name on what's good, "preference", or "happiness", if we agree that what's good, is good, good for me and good for you. The pursue of ethics is goodness.

I see the inherent inalienable need to choose between the two as closed-mindedness. Mr. Singer, who is, for what I know, the biggest proponent of Preferentialism, in all public appearances uses at some point hedonistic reasoning to appeal to the public. I would disapprove of him if he didn't. Similarly, I disapprove of a hedonistic utilitarian that strives to use Hedonism because it's what fits best his way of thinking, and yet even in hedonistic terms it would be better to use preferentialist discourse in several situations.

I don't see an obvious instance in which they are necessarily incompatible with each other. Even the one I brought up in this topic was quite dismissed or overcomed by RyanCarey. Call me indecisive if you like. I call it being flexible, adapting to diversity.

I don't see an obvious instance in which they are necessarily incompatible with each other.

That's the biggest problem for me, to be honest. When PU is clarified enough that it actually gives clear guidance, it either recommends situations which I imagine we'd both find unpalatable (eg the desert island example I think Ryan mentioned somewhere, where a man completely cut off from civilization wants something but will be completely unaffected by it if it happens), or it just seems to be another way of looking at happiness, with identical results to HU.

Either way I think you're right that it's not worth getting too hung up on, though, for precisely this reason - if they're so alike, why worry about it?

Hi all... to briefly chime in, I'm a hedonist, though I prefer using the term "experienced utility" instead of hedonism because hedonism has connotations of a more narrow pleasure. The term experienced utility comes from the paper "Experienced Utility as a Standard of Policy Evaluation" by Daniel Kahneman and Robert Sugden (Environmental & Resource Economics, 2005, 32: 161–181), or at least that's where I get the term from.

Why hedonism/experienced utility and not preference? (1) I think ignorance is bliss. (2) The perception of having preferences satisfied is an experience that I'd value, but I'd value other experiences as well.

But most of the time, the distinction is unimportant: maximizing expected utility generally involves promoting long-term civilizational survival regardless of how utility is defined. Actually, this holds even if we ultimately value non-sentient life or ecosystems instead of utility. (See Bruce Tonn, "Distant futures and the environment", Futures, 2002, 34, 117-132.)

Jeez, seems like everyone here would identify as a hedonist except for perhaps Mike. This will probably only confirm your hedonism, but Singer dedicates a section in "Peter Singer Under Fire" to critiques of his preference utilitarianism under the heading "Preference Utilitarianism or Hedonistic Utilitarianism?"

He begins by saying (something very similar to what Ryan said):

I am a preference utilitarian, but the choice between preference and hedonistic utilitarianism has always seemed to me one about which reasonable people can disagree. There are advantages and disadvantages to either choice.


After discussing some of the critic's objections to preference utilitarian, like how it doesn't lead to "majority-rule conventionalism", and why people's desires to eat meat don't count, he goes on to conclude with some of his own apprehensions about the position:

Now we come to a genuine difficulty for preference utilitarianism: the way in which a question is framed can greatly influence the preferences people give in response. It isn't clear how pervasive this problem is. We know that some of the preferences people express in response to questions will vary in accordance with the way the questions are framed, but as Gensler acknowledges, others will persist through a range of different ways in which we ask about them. Beyond that, the issue is one to which I need to give more thought. Is it merely a problem of how to get at the "real" preferences that underlie the different responses people may give to questions put to them in different ways, or does it show that there is no such thing as a "real" preference, apart from the fluctuating preferences that people may feel, and express, in different circumstances? If we are forced to conclude that the latter option is correct, this would be a significant reason for abandoning preference utilitarianism for hedonistic utilitarianism, or some other version of consequentialism.

ChrisCruise wrote:why people's desires to eat meat don't count

Those preferences, or that happiness, doesn't count? I hope you mean comparatively. I wouldn't dare to say any happiness or preference does not count. So why does happiness calculus have a definitive advantage there?

And, SethBaum? I find your comment on "Ignorance is bliss" disturbing. I wish you don't go saying it much. Ignorance is not something we should be spreading; ignorance is bliss for the ignorant, not for the ignored.

Mike Retriever wrote:And, SethBaum? I find your comment on "Ignorance is bliss" disturbing. I wish you don't go saying it much. Ignorance is not something we should be spreading; ignorance is bliss for the ignorant, not for the ignored.

Mike, we might be interpreting "ignorance is bliss" in different ways. Let me explain what I mean a bit more and maybe we can see whether this is the case.

By "ignorance is bliss", I mean to refer to the idea that our bliss is equally valuable regardless of whether it is based on accurate beliefs. For example, maybe I am happy because somehow I think that the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team won the World Series last year, when in fact the team had the second-worst record in the league. A more famous is example is of Cypher from The Matrix who desires to be plugged back into the matrix knowing that he will go on to a seemingly-wonderful but actually-false life.

The question at stake for my interpretation of "ignorance is bliss" is this: Is my (or Cypher's) happiness any less valuable, because it is based on a mistaken belief? I say no: all happiness is worth the same, regardless of the accuracy of any underlying beliefs. To me, it's the happiness that counts, not the beliefs. To be sure, if we later learn that our beliefs were mistaken, this can bring unhappiness. I would count this unhappiness just like any other.

I'm aware that some others hold different views on ignorance than I do, and I certainly understand that view, in the sense that I do have an internal intuition that corresponds with this view. I just ultimately don't happen to agree with it.

In more direct response to your comment: I would encourage the spread of ignorance only to the extent that it increased total utility. This is, I find, very infrequently, hence my career oriented towards open academic scholarship, online publishing, etc. And if one's ignorance harms others - the ignored - then this harm should be factored in. So for example, Cypher's decision might be deplorable if it leads to the matrix causing widespread harm, even if it brings himself a life of bliss.

So, does this clear things up at all? I'm curious if we might have been interpreting "ignorance is bliss" differently, or if we have a genuine disagreement of views.

Oh, well, in that sense I say that epistemic truth or metaphysical reality in ethical thinking are always subordinates of moral values, in themselves are not sufficient to determine goodness or badness.

That is tautologically true from an ethical standpoint, whether you like to live in the Matrix or not. By holding that truth is more valuable than non-truth, (or otherwise,) you are already valuing one over the other, which is a step further from identifying them, and makes most philosophical sense from an ethical perspective.

Epistemologically distinguishing between truth and non-truth, or metaphysically distinguishing between reality and fiction, is philosophical bureaucracy. It holds no relevant value if relevant value is not given to it, for which the branches of philosophy included in value theory exist, most importantly ethics.

After that, I agree with you in that non-truth or non-reality can be as much good or more good than reality. We can all think of cases in which that is ethically valid.

I wonder if you could rephrase it in a friendly manner that is not the over-used expression "Ignorance is bliss". Maybe "Non-reality can be equally satisfying". (Can be, not necessarily is.)

Sorry for being unclear Mike; yes I believe he means that the animal's preferences count as well. I thought that the other section that I transcribed earlier was more pertinent to the conversation we were having about preferentism vs hedonism. Here is what he says about eating meat in that same section:

In addition, in the specific case of people's desire to eat meat, Gensler overlooks the curcial fact--which so eloquently stated earlier--that meat-eating involves cruelty to animals. The animals' preferences count too, and would decisively out-weigh the preferences of the meat-eaters. Gensler suggests that there is some problem about knowing what animals would prefer if they reflected on the relevant facts, but it seems obvious that they would prefer not to suffer merely so that humans can pay less to eat their flesh. As it happens, there is experimental work that demonstrates clearly the preferences--and even the "informed" preferences--of chickens. I have already mentioned, in my response to Frey, the work of Marion Stamp Dawkins, a professor in the department of zoology at the University of Oxford. Dawkins has tested how hard chickens will work to change their conditions--for example, by having to repeatedly peck at a button in order to move from a wire cage to a grass run. She "informed" the chickens about their choices, by familiarizing them with both sets of conditions. She found, not surprisingly, that they prefer the grass run. She also found that hens have a strong preference to lay their eggs in darkened, soft-floored nesting boxes, rather than in a bare wire cage.

Oh yah, okay, all cleared now. I didn't comment on that other section because I don't find substantial difference. As I see it, he advocates for one or the other depending on rhetoric convenience.

According to it, if you're a child and I tell you "drink your orange juice so you'll feel well", it is better than if I tell you "drink your orange juice, the outcome of drinking it bears higher preference than otherwise".

The concepts are not substantially different for someone who fully understands both sentences above. The explanation is.