Formalizing Preference Utilitarianism in Physical World Models

نویسنده

  • Caspar Oesterheld
چکیده

Most ethical work is done at a low level of formality. This makes practical moral questions inaccessible to formal and natural sciences and can lead to misunderstandings in ethical discussion. In this paper, we use Bayesian inference to introduce a formalization of preference utilitarianism in physical world models, specifically cellular automata. Even though our formalization is not immediately applicable, it could provide ethics and ultimately the question of how to “make the world better” with a formal

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

منابع مشابه

Measurement-Theoretic Foundations of Preference Aggregation Logic for Weighted Utilitarianism

Harsanyi [4, 5] develops expected utility theory of von Neumann and Morgenstern [21] to provide two formalizations of utilitarianism. Weymark [22, 23] refers to these results as Harsanyi’s Aggregation and Impartial Observer Theorems. In this paper, we are concerned only with Aggregation Theorem. Sen [6] argues that von Neumann-Morgenstern expected utility theory is an ordinal theory and, theref...

متن کامل

Is Utilitarianism Bad for Women?

Philosophers and policy-makers concerned with the ethics, economics, and politics of development argue that the phenomenon of “adaptive preference” makes preference-utilitarian measures of well-being untenable. Poor women in the Global South, they suggest, adapt to deprivation and oppression and may come to prefer states of affairs that are not conducive to flourishing. This critique, however, ...

متن کامل

Preference aggregation and game theory

1 Non-strategic point of view Arrow Harsanyi and utilitarianism Interpersonal comparison of utilities 2 Strategic aspects and game theory Strategic voting, and G-S " Small worlds " Computational issues 3 A broader picture Great confusion under the sky: excellent situation! To put the cart before the horses Non welfarist approaches F. Patrone Preference aggregation and GT Non-strategic point of ...

متن کامل

Explaining Updates by Minimal Sums

Human reasoning about developments of the world involves always an assumption of inertia. We discuss two approaches for formalizing such an assumption, based on the concept of an explanation: (1) there is a general preference relation ≺ given on the set of all explanations, (2) there is a notion of a distance between models and explanations are preferred if their sum of distances is minimal. Ea...

متن کامل

Utilitarianism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Utilitarianism is the ethical doctrine that the moral worth of an action is solely determined by its contribution to overall utility. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined by its outcome—the ends justify the means. Utility — the good to be maximized — has been defined by various thinkers as happiness or pleasure (versus sadness or pain), ...

متن کامل

ذخیره در منابع من


  با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

عنوان ژورنال:
  • Synthese

دوره 193  شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2016