Deontology and virtue ethics as "effective theories" of consequentialist ethics
post by Jan_Kulveit · 2022-11-17T14:11:49.087Z · LW · GW · 9 comments9 comments
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comment by Jonathan Moregård (JonathanMoregard) · 2022-11-17T19:50:31.900Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I really enjoyed your "successor agent" framing of virtue ethics! There are some parts of the section that could use clarification:
Virtue ethics is the view that our actions should be motivated by the virtues and habits of character that promote the good life
This sentence doesn't make sense to me. Do you mean something like "Virtue ethics is the view that our actions should be motivated by the virtues and habits of character they promote" or "Virtue ethics is the view that our actions should reinforce virtues and habits of character that promote the good life"? It looks like two sentences got mixed up.
"Virtues are not intrinsically right or wrong;"
I get confused by this statement. I think of virtue ethics as putting all moral value onto the way you are training yourself to act. Virtue is the sole Good etc. Can you clarify what you mean here?
"Taking honesty as an example virtue, we should strive to be honest, even if being dishonest would lead to some greater good"
I guess you mean "lead to consequences that would be better according to a consequentialist perspective". When discussing different views on ethics the term "good" gets overloaded.
Replies from: Jan_Kulveit↑ comment by Jan_Kulveit · 2022-11-18T15:46:19.109Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
- Virtue ethics is the view that our actions should be motivated by the virtues and habits of character that promote the good life
This sentence doesn't make sense to me. Do you mean something like "Virtue ethics is the view that our actions should be motivated by the virtues and habits of character they promote" or "Virtue ethics is the view that our actions should reinforce virtues and habits of character that promote the good life"? It looks like two sentences got mixed up
Sorry for confusion I tried to paraphrase what classical virtue ethicist believe, in my view.
For clarity, this is how I interpret it in a computationalist way: virtue ethics focuses on the properties of decision procedures leading to actions, and takes them as the central object of theory. "Action is good so far as it was produced by a good(=virtuous) computational procedure + reinforces the good computations". Where the focus is on the computations.
The philosophy encyclopedia states .... virtue ethicists will resist the attempt to define virtues in terms of some other concept that is taken to be more fundamental. Rather, virtues and vices will be foundational for virtue ethical theories and other normative notions will be grounded in them.
- "Virtues are not intrinsically right or wrong;"
I get confused by this statement. I think of virtue ethics as putting all moral value onto the way you are training yourself to act. Virtue is the sole Good etc. Can you clarify what you mean here?
Again, it's me trying to paraphrase what I believe classical virtue ethicists believe.
My interpretation of the claim is this: in the previously described computationalist paraphrase, you may be left wondering how do you decide about which properties of the computations make them good. Where you have an easy option to ground it in outcomes, consequentialist style. But as I understand it, the classical claim is you try to motivate it purely "intrinsically": your goal is to design the best possible successor agent ... and that it. You evaluate the properties of the computations using that. All other forms of "good", such as good outcomes, will follow.
My personal take is this leaves virtue ethics partially under-defined.
- "Taking honesty as an example virtue, we should strive to be honest, even if being dishonest would lead to some greater good"
I guess you mean "lead to consequences that would be better according to a consequentialist perspective". When discussing different views on ethics the term "good" gets overloaded.
Yes.
comment by Jan_Kulveit · 2024-01-12T00:12:24.440Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
My current view is this post is decent at explaining something which is "2nd type of obvious" in a limited space, using a physics metaphor. What is there to see is basically given in the title: you can get a nuanced understanding of the relations between deontology, virtue ethics and consequentialism using the frame of "effective theory" originating in physics, and using "bounded rationality" from econ.
There are many other ways how to get this: for example, you can read hundreds of pages of moral philosophy, or do a degree in it. Advantage of this text is you can take a shortcut and get the same using the physics metaphorical map. The disadvantage is understanding how effective theories work in physics is a prerequisite, which quite constrains the range of people to which this is useful, and the broad appeal.
comment by Ruby · 2022-11-17T18:27:23.820Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
See also Two-Level Utilitarianism
Replies from: Jan_Kulveit↑ comment by Jan_Kulveit · 2022-11-18T15:51:24.801Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Nice, thanks for the pointer.
My overall guess is after surfing through / skimming philosophy literature on this for many hours is you can probably find all core ideas of this post somewhere in it, but it's pretty frustrating - scattered in many places and diluted by things which are more confused.
↑ comment by Mo Putera (Mo Nastri) · 2023-08-03T15:08:52.049Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Scott's classic essay Axiology, morality, law also begins (in section II) with
Everything below is taken from vague concepts philosophers talk about all the time, but which I can’t find a single good online explanation of.
and yet I'm glad he distilled them, just like I'm glad you distilled those scattered ideas into this single post I can share with friends in a low-friction way.
comment by Confusion · 2023-01-30T08:10:40.266Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Could I summarize this as: deontological and virtue-ethical moral principles are often useful approximations to consequentialist reasoning, that are faster to apply to a situation and therefore often preferable as a guide to desired behavior?
comment by Morpheus · 2022-11-18T14:44:51.021Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
From virtues perspective, the group organizer should be worried if they are not on the path to turn themselves from a thinker to an idea salesperson.
From the structure of your argument, I infer, you want to leave out the "not" from that sentence, right?
From virtues perspective, the group organizer should be worried if they are on the path to turn themselves from a thinker to an idea salesperson.
I think I don't really get the psychology of most people here. Like, when I first heard about effective altruism, I'd have loved to meet with someone who could get me up to speed rather quickly. I think the only problem with this, just like with real salespeople, is that you have to second guess yourself how much they are in it for their own instead of your benefit. This means I want to figure out how much someone is genuinely excited about the whole topic. For example, I recently sent out some invitations to our local EA meetup to some of my friends. Some of them have never heard about EA before. Am I coming across as spammy if I invite someone for the third time, because the person gave a plausible explanation why they couldn't come the last two times? If someone does not reply, should I remind them? In practice, I am mostly thinking about whether the person would enjoy the meetup. The potential impact of the person does go into my calculus whether it is worth the effort for me, given that I already have lots of friends with whom I can talk about EA topics.