Right—that's, effectively, the difference between "cultural meta-ethics" and "moral relativism." What I'm saying is that, on an individual level, ethics is a problem that will be completely solved by neuropsychology: once we find out our particular utility function, we just have obey it optimally. Thus, Ethics as a field of endeavor should drop that kind of individual-level moral quandary, and focus on inter-societal quandaries, since that's what we'll really need to figure out—how to handle, and interact with, societies that have different utility functions than our own (including the ones we end up creating ourselves using genetic engineering, AI, and so forth.)
Humans are not inherently expected utility maximizers, they're bounded agents with little capacity for reflection. Utility functions are great and all, but in the words of Zack M. Davis, "Humans don't have utility functions."
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Right—that's, effectively, the difference between "cultural meta-ethics" and "moral relativism." What I'm saying is that, on an individual level, ethics is a problem that will be completely solved by neuropsychology: once we find out our particular utility function, we just have obey it optimally. Thus, Ethics as a field of endeavor should drop that kind of individual-level moral quandary, and focus on inter-societal quandaries, since that's what we'll really need to figure out—how to handle, and interact with, societies that have different utility functions than our own (including the ones we end up creating ourselves using genetic engineering, AI, and so forth.)
From the most recent post on LW http://lesswrong.com/lw/2aa/virtue_ethics_for_consequentiali...
Humans are not inherently expected utility maximizers, they're bounded agents with little capacity for reflection. Utility functions are great and all, but in the words of Zack M. Davis, "Humans don't have utility functions."
"once we find out our particular utility function, we just have obey it optimally."
Is this function computable?