Sorry, yes it was. Although I suppose now that you have chimed in I can ask the reverse. Do you likewise think it is inclined towards evil, as Aaron does?

No I don't I think human beings have a propensity for both but an inclination for good, allowing some caveats.

Yes, but the condition is ill-defined. Here's what you originally stated:

The connections between all of the considerations here is basically non-existent. Even if I grant that the substitution of "will lead a regime that murders millions" is an objectively meaningful category of potential events, it does not create a meaningful category of situations with which to do an analysis of this type.

The value of the rotten meat scenario is a direct cause-effect between the proposed event and the set of outcomes. The set of outcomes is complete (barring slightly other categories like "partially sickened" or something like that).

Again, we have a direct cause-effect between the proposed event and set of outcomes. We also have a robustness of outcomes under consideration.

(However, as a side note, consequentialism probably implies that driving drunk in the extremely rural areas is not likely to be morally bad because of the improbability of causing harm. Indeed, I'm at least somewhat confident that people drive home drunk out in rural country all the time.)

The Hitler scenario is simply not an appreciable observation with which to make a meaningful moral judgment.

Subjective consequentialism

and meta-ethical relativism

As a general statement of human nature, no. However, I can grant that there are situational conditions in which humans may be inclined towards good. By and large, parents feed their kids and don't kill them. That can be construed to imply a situational natural inclination towards good.

However, my statement is intended to be interpreted as a broad statement about the overall human condition.

Firstly, let me just note that a similar example was in the SEP article and didn't see any objection to proclaiming the liklihood of future events like become a mass murderer or a curer of disease:
The main way you seem to want to differentiate between these cases and things like rotten meat is this:

I don't see the difference. A child may or may not grow up to be a mass murderer. Is there not a direct cause-effect between the proposed event of killing the child and the outcome of preventing their mass murdering? "robustness of outcomes" mainly makes me want to go Scalia style with a lot of "Huh?"s and" [whatever this means]"..



You really ought to give an explicit and precise reason, as I have asked many times, for why you think these are similar. Thus far the only thing you have contributed on this topic is that you think they "flow well". Well, explain it!

These two quotes (and note that this version of subj. cons. is rather different from the SEP version) are fundamentally and irrevocably different. I'm going to quote from slightly later in the paragraph on meta ethical relativism to make this completely clear:
My guess - and since you haven't made an argument that is all I can do - is that you are interpreting the "standpoints" in "relative to particular standpoints" incorrectly. As the above makes clear, we are talking about a particular normative framework, i.e., and ethical theory like subjective consequentialism (henceforth SC) or the deontological claims of the ten commandments, or whatever else. Meta-ethical relativism (henceforth MER) is NOT an ethical theory, it is a meta ethical theory that claims that truth and falsity are only relative to a particular ethical theory.

In SC, however, you could also rephrase it to contain the same string "particular standpoints", but what is meant is substantially different. In this case, the ethical theory does depend on who the actor is. It may be right for person A to kill person B, but wrong for person C to do so on this theory. The idea of an ethical theory depending on the cognitive status of an individual is fundamentally distinct from the idea of a meta ethical theory that depends on different ethical theories. Yes you might say the word "perspective" in both, but the main fundamentally different things.

Now the question turns to whether - despite being fundamentally distinct - there is some conception that you haven't explained of them "flowing well" together or not being very "far away". I actually don't disagree that one can consistently affirm SC and MER, but this is hardly the only pairing that "flows well". Indeed, as your source notes:
I challenge you to explicitly and precisely justify your repeated yet entirely undefended claims about the similarity between this ethical theory and this meta-ethical theory in a way that is not true when paired with other ethical theories.

And why do you think this? Let's accept the simplification of human behaviour that lots of people do lots of things that are generally called good or evil. How do you get to observing the dominating of the one versus the other? Is it just a function of believing in original sin, perhaps, and not something observed? Evolutinarily, I think humans have evolved both selfish and altruistic tendencies (although sometimes you can think of the latter as a form of group selfishness, if you wish), but don't see any particular reason to say we are inclined to one but not the other.

You're doing that thing again where you take quotes that address things that you're not actually talking about to try to make your points. We're talking about objective consequentialism and the ascription of objective probabilities. The quote you're reading makes *NO* distinction between objective and subjective probabilities. Here's the entire paragraph of which you quoted a portion:

The statement does not declare that, in fact, the probabilities being stated are objective probabilities or that this is sufficient for a meaningful objective consequentialist reasoning. (The underlined statement addresses something that has far more to do with the conversation between myself and dereds. This is just a side comment.)

It surprises me none that you don't see the difference. That's that willful ignorance thing creeping in again. That you either want to pretend "eating rotten meat" and "getting sick" are not causally connected in an obvious way or that "not being killed" and "becoming the next Hitler" are causally connected in an obvious way only goes to show the underlying weakness of your position.

You want to grab a naive level of discussion of utilitarianism (that is only making the argument that "one can have reasons to think some actions reduce utility") and try to claim that this leads to some sort of information about objective probabilities just won't be that successful. We can agree that it's unlikely that it is unlikely for a random child to lead a regime that will kill millions, but that alone is insufficient to make the claim that "we can still say that murdering a kid is bad even though we don't know for certainty that the kid doesn't grow up to become hitler."

The problem is that you're saying "X is immoral because Y is improbable." The statement that Y is improbable (even objectively improbable) does not indicate anything about the morality of X in an objective manner. Let's say that there is a epsilon chance that Y happens. Without having anything meaningful to say about the remaining 1-epsilon events, you can make no objective statement about the morality of X.

In the other examples, the events are in the form Y and not-Y, where Y can be understood as clearly good and not-Y can be seen as clearly bad. Therefore, the set of possible outcomes is basically completely characterized (ie, "robust"). In the Hitler example, they really aren't.

I would have thought that virtually parallel language would be more than sufficient for you to see it, but if you can't see what's right in front of you, I'm unsure of whether a wall of text is going to do any better for you.

*Yawn* -- I didn't say that they were the same. I explicitly told you that neither one implies the other in any formal way. Quit playing the strawman game.

So.... even AFTER I've clarified my use of language and we agreed upon interpretations of the words, you're not going to actually hold to the interpretations of the words that have been given? That I've told you that my previous usage of "moral relativism" and "meta-ethical moral relativism" are the definition (e) that was quoted that you're going to take my words and try to compare them to definition (g) just says that I'm having a conversation with someone who has no clue what I'm saying.

Let's recall what my position really is here since there appears to be some confusion. I offered that it is canonical to accept objective consequentialism as a weaker standard than actual consequences, but instead just focus on likely consequences. The next question was, what exactly do we mean when we say likely consequences. You seem happy with me speaking about the likelihood of coinflips, of getting sick from eating rotten meat, and of crashing as a drunk driver. Yet you are rejecting me speaking about the likelihood of a child growing up to be a mass murder. You have yet to provide a meaningful reason why we can speak about the likelihood of future events in the former cases, but can't in the latter.

Here you are challenging not our ability to make the claim "it is unlikely a child will grow up to be a mass murderer", but challenging that this is a casual consequence. This is a rather different thing. If we were to conclude it was likely that a child will grow up to be a mass murder, then there would be a causal connection between us kill the child and saving their likely victims. Thankfully, we know that growing up to be a mass murderer is a rare occurrence.


The child either gets sick or doesn't. The drunk driver either kills someone or doesn't. The child either kills many people or doesn't. It is Y vs not Y for all of them. No difference here.

And in all cases we make a moral claim about X (it is wrong to feed the meat, it is wrong to allow the driver to drive home, it is wrong not to kill the child) based on the likeliness of Y. In the case of feeding rotten meat and allowing a drunk to drive, there is a high likeliness of harm. In the case of allowing a child to live, there is a low likeliness of this specific type of harm. So again, no difference here.

You have thrown out the entire project of objective consequentialism in this case. The whole point is to conclude that actions are wrong if the likely consequence are bad. It is not wrong to feed your children fresh meat because that is objectively improbable to harm them but it is wrong to feed your children rotten meat because that isn't. You aren't differentiating these cases in any way.


You are arguing that we CAN describe the likelihood of future events like a child becoming sick from rotten meat, but can NOT do this for the likelihood of a child becoming a mass murderer. I have no idea how you distinguish between these. And the point of my references was purely to show how the very article was quite happy to speak about the likelihood of both of these possibilities. It is simply objectively true that huamns are unlikely to grow up to be mass murderers. I'm not quite sure what you think a subjective probability is, but I'd suggest you go back and read the definition of subjective vs objective consequentialism more carefully because it isn't whether someone used objective probabilities vs subjective probabilities or something like this.


I didn't say you did; I didn't play the strawman game. I repeatedly and faithfully reproduced your characterization that they" flowed well", that it was "not far away", not that you said they were the same. Indeed, I directly challenged you to explicitly describe what it is that you mean here. You have yet to shed any light, even despite me quoting from e - not g, as you accuse - a passage showing how this meta ethical theory consistently works with choosing an ethical theory that is certainly not only SC. I don't see any meaningful way to make sense of the claim that MER flows well with SC in ways other ethical theories do not. I will repeat my ignored challenge to demonstrate this.

That is just the point. They are NOT "virtually parallel", and outside of seemingly believing that it is self evident that they are, you have yet in this thread to EVER actually demonstrate what this similarity is. Write your wall of text. Explain it, if only once. In particular, you should address - as I have described at length and you have repeatedly ignored - my description of how a superficially similar word - standpoint - might appear to be "parallel", but means very, very different things in the two contexts.

I have no idea what it even means to say a particular meta ethical theory is "not that far away" from an particular ethical theory. It seems like a nonsensical category error on its face. But even ignoring that, just because I phrase two definitions to both include a phrase like "particular standpoint" so that you can say they have "virtually parallel language", that doesn't actually point to any meaningful similarity if in for the ethical theory the "particular standpoint" is talking about the knowledge available to the actor, and in the other the "particular standpoint" is a choice of ethical theory being held by the arbiters.


I am fully aware you are using e. I made multiple quotes from e in my reply!. Everything I said makes sense for e and does not for g. I explicitly told you earlier I was using e, and accepted your using e. There is simply no confusion here. So I would suggest you go back and actually address what you "snipped".


Can you please find it within yourself to keep your condescension to yourself if you wish to engage me on these topics?

To be clear, you really think that the binary condition of "becomes Hitler" and "not becomes Hitler" is a sufficient delineation of the various moral outcomes? This is just an absolutely absurd position to take. And if you can't see that, you deserve every bit of condescension you've received thus far.

Huh? You're not even comparing the same action. You're also missing a huge swath of considerations. Mere probability is grossly insufficient for the application of a consequentialist analysis.

No, I'm not. Read closely and carefully. (Well, not that closely, and not that carefully. There's absolutely no reason for my point to be controversial.) Hitler vs not-Hitler is far too vague and insufficiently robust to be a meaningful analysis. Unless you've created a toy model in which being anything but Hitler is a moral good (ie, you don't care what other types of bad things that a future person may do as long as he's not a Hitler), you've got an absolutely meaningless analysis, and you cannot actually conclude what you've said you can conclude.

Even the article had to present at least *some* type of not-Hitler situation and make some claims about it (and it's not at all obvious that the naive analysis presented for illustrative purposes is itself meaningful).

Look -- If you want to "win" the argument by declaring a sub-naive argument as being meaningful, go for it. Your binary Hitler/not-Hitler analysis is simply absurd. That you don't understand the idea of a direct causal analysis and vague hand-waving is your problem, not mine.

Objective probabilities depend on the facts of the matter and subjective probabilities depend on the individual perception of the matter.

Right... you didn't say

I never claimed they were the same. I never denied that they are different. It's hard to know what else you might be claiming with this accusation.

Here's what you quoted:

And here is your challenge:

First, notice that you've made the accusation again that I'm saying they're the same by re-emphasize the difference between them. I do not deny that they're different.

Second, the IEP quote is a DIRECT REFERENCE to (g). Specifically, it's talking about (g-2), the thing that separates meta-ethical relativism and "fully-fledged" relativism.

Here are the relevant parts again:

And here's the thing you quoted:

The underlined thing that is being referenced is (g-2). The *ENTIRE* statement is a comparison between (e) and (g). There is no other way of reading that statement. Statement (g-1) is the statement of meta-ethical relativism, virtually word-for-word. So the challenge you've raised with this quote is trying to have me defend against (g). There's literally no reason to bring that quote up OTHER THAN some comparison between (e) and (g). Nothing else makes sense.

The very next sentence AFFIRMS my reading.

Thirdly, I never claimed any sort of "uniqueness" about the pairing. I will give you a chance to quote me saying otherwise. Failure to do so would simply affirm what I've been saying about your characterization of my position, that you have no idea what you're arguing about.

Read the definitions. I don't know if you want to call it a meta-cognitive level of understanding or what, but they both fit with each other in an obvious way if you just think about what each one is saying. Maybe some highlighting, bolding, and labeling will obscure the obvious enough that you might accept it?

Subjective consequentialism holds that the permissibility of S's X-ing (the moral judgment of X) depends not on the facts but on S's evidences concerning possible outcomes (relative to the individual's perception).

Meta-ethical relativism holds that moral judgments are not true or false in any absolute sense (are not treated as absolute facts), but only relative to particular standpoints (of the individual).

This parallel makes the two work together well in a way that is not true of other combinations. For example,

Objective consequentialism holds that the permissibility of S's X-ing depends solely on the facts and not at all on what S's evidence is.

Notice how the bolded and italicized portions are mismatched. These don't work together well.

Meh. I'm feeling lazy. The wall of text is above. I just graffiti-ed my response.

Your insistence on redefining terms in narrow-minded ways to suit your needs is laughable. There. I've addressed it. Just stop insisting I'm saying something when I'm not saying it, and this won't be an issue.

When you say things like this, it makes it sound like you believe there's no connection between meta-ethics and ethics. Let me remind you that the following is the position you've taken with regards to the absence of a connection between ethics and meta-ethics:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/13...l#post46948236

No. We cannot. Not in practice, and not in principle. You cannot assume that everything just translates in a perfect way ("lock step") to make everything identically meaningful. That was the entire point of bringing up the issue of wishful thinking. The meta-ethical position has a direct impact on the ethical reasoning, including creating boundaries on what are and are not meaningful statements. In order to hold some ethical concepts under some meta-ethical perspectives, you have to do some wild contortions that make the overall picture look stupid.

Look at what you had to do with divine command theory and strict consequentialism work together. You had to define the command theory to be a very narrow collection of commands (namely, I command you to do things that produce maximize utility), and that object is nothing that actually reflects anything like what divine command theorists claim. That's a failure of two concepts to work together well. It's not complicated unless you have no idea what you're talking about, in which case you're hopeless.

If you can find it within yourself to stop making dumb statements, sure.

If you had saved this until the end, I might have read your post. But it prompted me to skip forward and see how you responded to my last comment:
Yup, thought so. **** off.

There's a considerable gap to consider between what the individual perceives and what the reality is. Again, I'll draw my analogy from business. People invest waaaaay too much money into failing businesses because of some (naive and ungrounded?) hope that things will be better some day. And in the process, they make their lives far worse. People are wrong about all sorts of judgments regarding the valuation of things.

I would also point out that people who don't believe their lives are worth living, ie people who are suicidal, usually persist in that state far longer than what one might deem "rational" if they really truly believed that life was not worth living. We also have people who are in a depressed state who might grossly undervalue the future happiness of their lives. So even if it's true that people believe that their lives are worth living, I'm not sure this is sufficient evidence to accept that it's true that their lives are worth living (similarly for their valuation of their lives not being worth living).

Can you clarify the nature of these exceptions? When is someone unfit to judge the value of their own life to the point that you would risk the significant harm of denying individual autonomy?

On this point, with a singular overriding principle that dominates all other considerations, it would seem you've established a de facto deontological rule regarding the value of life.

My point was that, in response to your hypothetical re-calculation of whether it would be better or worse for the individual to know about the condition, that there seems to be a tipping point beyond which the consequentialist analysis would deem not knowing to be a good thing. An extension of that would be an instantaneous killing (hence denying any negative effect of the person suffering through the medical condition) seem to be able to be moved into the realm of being a moral good.

I would explore the possibility that the privileging of the individual to declare the value of their life makes for a better deontological position than a consequentialist one. You seem to be declaring an inherent wrongness of taking someone's life against their will. We have a duty to protect that, even if it leads to bad outcomes (someone choosing to live even though the outcome is that they suffer tremendously).

I am not disputing people often make decisions that make things worse for them, the actions we take are frequently counterproductive to our goals but I don't see any plausible way of qualifying whether a persons life is worth living that doesn't involve asking them. When you ask someone if their life is worth living their answer is privileged. There also seems to be a presumption that life is worth living, we only ever diagnose those who answer the question no with some condition never the person that answers yes. I am not saying that a persons response is infallible, we may expect a particular response from a rational agent under particular circumstances but it's where I start.

When they are unable to exercise autonomy and are unlikely to be able to, some form of permanent vegetative state for instance.

I don't think I have. Consequentialism is best understood as a theory of the right, how to evaluate the rightness of some act, it is not a theory of the good, various definitions of what is morally good have been reconciled with consequentialism including hedonist and preference satisfaction utilitarianism etc. Central to these theories of the good is the concept of personal autonomy, we get to decide what we find pleasurable, we determine our preferences. This is not some deontological principle this is central to many utilitarian accounts of the good.

Sure, this is not controversial. If the outcomes are different then the post hoc consequentialist analysis of those outcomes will be. All the hypothetical was seeking to demonstrate was that an act we would ordinarily consider morally bad could have a morally good outcome.

This does not follow, firstly there is the attack on the persons personal autonomy, the killer denies the victim the opportunity to decide for themselves the time and manner of their death. Also random killings harm the living.

As I have suggested above personal autonomy is available as part of a conception of the good to both the consequentialist and deontologist. In this sense personal autonomy is important to our interests as moral subjects. We are also moral agents and moral agency seems to require a degree of personal autonomy, if a person is coerced into some act we may not hold them morally culpable even for a morally wrong act.

If we have reason to believe someone is suffering then we can ask the question again, if that person answers yes their life is worth living then we can do what we can do to minimise that suffering but we can respect their answer. However I allow that if there answer is no their life is not worth living and they express a preference to end it they can.

This really sounds like a deontological position rather than a consequentialist one. Remember that deontology emphasizes what is "right" ("duty") over what is "good." Because of the privileged role that you're giving the individual's assessment, it seems that you're saying it's more important to preserve autonomy than it is to maximize utility. It seems that you might argue that we have a duty to protect autonomy even if that autonomy is sending utility into a downward spiral.

This also seems deontological to me. That we have a duty (within certain constraints) to preserve life. This would also avoid the consequentialist's problem of having to deal with the repugnant conclusion.

You have that backwards. Consequentialism is about what is good (maximizing utility). For example:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/

(I used the link on deontology because it helps bring out this particular contrast better.)

---

Can you review this part of the paragraph in light of what I pointed out above? I want to make sure that I'm understanding what you're saying.

This really sounds deontological. It sounds like a duty to protect autonomy and life. We can change the scenario to a random killing that happens to occur to someone who is on his way to committing suicide. What is the actual harm?

I don't deny that autonomy can be valued in both frameworks. But I'm not convinced that the way you're setting things up is best understood as a consequentialist argument.

Consider a person who is in a depressed suicidal state. That person is suffering. If we ask the person if their life is worth living, they may well say no. Would you say that we should therefore give the thumbs up to this person committing suicide? Or do you think we should deny both the individual's assessment and autonomy and take active steps to prevent the individual from exerting that autonomy?

Consequentialism is a theory of the right not the good, ethical theories consists of what is good and what is right, the consequentialist believes that the right course of action is whatever maximises the good but it does not define what the good is. What that quote is doing is telling you that the consequentialist must define what the good is prior to evaluating the rightness of the act in maximising it. Preference satisfaction and hedonism are theories of the good, consequentialists of both types will evaluate the rightness of acts in maximising these.

Think about it another way, both the hedonist and preference satisfaction utilitarian are consequentialists but disagree about what is good, maximising pleasure for one preference satisfaction for the other, if consequentialism is a theory of the good then where is their disagreement located. It is not about the right they both believe the right act is the one that maximises utility but their definition of utility is different.

I'll get back to the rest later but I'm not sure what progress we can make if we are stuck here.

Let me see if I can break through the linguistic impasse.

When I say that consequentialism is "a theory about what is good" I'm not saying that consequentialism defines "what is good." But rather, I'm trying to focus on the comparison of consequentialism and deontology. Consequentialism takes some concept of "what is good" and then builds up an analysis of that in order to maximize whatever it is. Deontology focuses on the action itself, and pays no focus on the consequences of those actions. That is, it doesn't "care" about making "good" happen, where "good" is a separate object from "right."

To boil down my challenge to your position to its basic formulation, if you define "the good" in such a way that there are some principles that are basically "undefeatable" (you value "autonomy" so much that even if people are in a downward spiral and killing them would reduce their suffering tremendously, you would not say that killing them is good if they don't want to be killed), it reads very deontologically. There is some sort of sense that this thing is so important that it basically denies all of the types of arguments one would make using a consequentialist approach.

Edit: You added another paragraph, but I don't think there's anything to respond to based on what I've said in this post. I think I have teased out what I was trying to say sufficiently clearly.

I've read this a number of times and I still don't know whether you accept you were mistaken when you suggested I had it backwards, this is not just a linguistic impasse this is at the heart of our disagreement. Whether I can properly defend the concept of personal liberty being part of what constitutes the good is what we are discussing.

In fact JS Mill has done this, as the author of both classics Utilitarianism and On Liberty he has no problem in advocating a utilitarianism that incorporates what is good about individual liberty.

There are two distinct components of a moral theory, firstly their is a theory of the good, what is held to be valuable, utilitarian conceptions of the good include pleasure in the case of hedonism or preference satisfaction. These are theories of what is valuable. Theories of the right describe what the moral agent should do with regard to that which is valuable. So consequentialism, which advises that the right action is that which maximises the good is quiet on what is good.

So let's consider the two examples of theories of the good, as I have mentioned in these exchanges both hedonist and preference satisfaction utilitarians value personal autonomy, this personal autonomy is essential in deciding ones preferences and pleasures so there is no contradiction in valuing that personal autonomy and consequentialism which merely tells us what we should do in regard the utility that entails such autonomy.

Now utilitarianism does place constraints on how we may excercise our autonomy and remain moral. It may not be possible to be moral if I am giving too little or if in acting differently I could increase overall pleasure.

However, your continued presentation of my valuing personal autonomy as deontological I think also misses the point. Deontological ethical theories bestow upon me duties, surely just as personal autonomy is subject to utilitarian constraints so it is constrained by deontological ethics. Kantian theorists may deny me the autonomy to choose to lie and remain moral where lying could have averted a greater moral harm.

But these constraints on personal autonomy deny neither the deontologist or the utilitarian the right to value it. So to suggest that a consequentialist is somehow bound to admit cases where random killings increase utility are wrong. It is perfectly reasonable for the utilitarian to argue that the persons choice to live privileged.

Whooops. I had typed more and deleted it, and it included a statement to that effect.

I have no problem with a pluralistic understanding of utility that includes personal liberty as one of the things that are weighed against each other. That's not really the issue.

This is all saying that you are allowing a pluralistic measure of "the good." There are many things that are good that are being played against each other, and that it is possible to be in a situation where more of one type of good reduces the overall measure of good (because a different action that creates a small gain for good X would also creates a large loss for good Y). Is this correct?

Privileged in what sense? That it always overrides all other types of good? That's the thing that strikes me as being odd. As soon as you privilege one type of good so that it makes the others irrelevant, I cease to understand this as a utilitarian calculation. It doesn't seem to be a balance of anything against anything else. It just feels like you've set up a moral rule.

I meant to get back to this earlier but time constraints..

Not really, utilitarians, I am not claiming to be one fwiw, generally struggle with pluralist accounts of goods, they instead reduce to one account, pleasure in the case of hedonism or preferences for example. But these accounts of the good entail personal autonomy, the individual determines their preferences or what pleasures them.

Privileged in that an individual has a unique perspective on whether their life is worth living. This does not mean that society is bound to honor their perspective only that they have a better handle than others. And while it is possible to raise objections at the depressed or suicidal persons perspective no one ever raises objections to those who choose to live.

I took the language from SEP:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism

When I am referring to utilitarianism I am generally referring to classical utilitarianism which holds there is one fundamental value and that other values are instrumental in satisfying it. Traditionally hedonist, pleasure as the good but alternatives include desire and preference satisfaction. Moore's ideal utilitarianism was a rejection of this monist account of value and generally marks the distinction between utilitarian and broader consequentialist ethical theories. But sure I’ll accept there are pluralist utilitarian accounts.

Apologies I want to respond in some detail to two claims, the first that my privileging personal autonomy is deontological rather than consequentialist. The second that consequentialists should accept that random killings can constitute a morally good outcome for the victim.

On the first claim our discussion on value was a result of my holding personal autonomy central to consequentialist accounts of the good, this holds regardless of whether we accept monist or pluralist accounts of value.

On monist accounts, such as hedonism and preference satisfactions autonomy is essential in deciding pleasures and preferences. On a pluralistic account of value then personal autonomy may be considered one of those values. Fine, both demonstrates that personal autonomy is available to the consequentialist and there is nothing deontological in my presentation so far.

With regard to the second claim that consequentialists should accept that random killings can constitute a morally good outcome for the victim.

I deny this on the grounds of violating the victims personal autonomy which we should now agree is available to the consequentialist. But there is another related problem. At the point a victim is killed their future suffering becomes epistemically inaccessible, we can’t know the victims future states. At best we can infer a degree of suffering from experience of other cases. Given that I privilege the first person perspective what we can know of their current state counts for more than what we may infer about their future states. Further a killer prevents no future suffering if we provide a means by which a victim may choose to prevent or end that suffering in the future.

Now there will be occasions when the consequentialist holds that a random killing has a good outcome for a moral subject or contributes to the greatest happiness for the greatest number but this is not on the grounds of the suffering it denies the victim.

This doesn't seem right to me, though. The nature of consequentialist accounts is that the thing that matters is the consequence. I can accept that personal autonomy plays a role (at least in some sense) in the determination of values and pleasures, but I don't see how such a perspective extends to the actual outcomes.

Maybe we should distinguish between autonomy (which I understand as the ability to act) and "evaluative freedom" (a phrasing I made up just now to represent the establishment of things that will be valued).

On a strict consequentialist account, the means by which a good is obtained is irrelevant insofar as all other considerations are held static. This seems to be the distinguishing characteristic of consequentialism. If I want a burger, it doesn't matter so much if I buy the burger for myself or if someone else randomly buys it for me (as long as a burger is the only thing that I value).

So the autonomy element is irrelevant but the evaluative freedom is meaningful.

The same would be true for someone who has decided to commit suicide. Once the declaration of the thing that is desired (to be killed) is established, I don't see how the consequentialist account cares who does the killing, nor does it care about the motives behind the killing. All it cares about is the satisfaction of the desired outcome.

However, a deontological account where (for example) we have a duty to not randomly kill people, it makes sense to say that the killing was wrong even though it met a particular desired outcome.

Let's consider a world in which everybody knows everybody else. People are generally happy, except that there's this one guy who is a clinically depressed alcoholic with chronic pain who is unresponsive to all available treatment options. This guy is a real downer and makes everyone else sad because they see the physical and emotional suffering, and they recognize that there's nothing that anyone can do to help him to overcome his illness.

If this guy were to die, everyone will have a sense of relief at the end of his suffering, but he doesn't want to die. He keeps persisting in that way that your crotchety crazy aunt that hates everybody keeps on living.

I do not understand how, on a consequentialist account, that a random killing that ended with this person dying is not seen as a good because it prevents this guy from being miserable AND bringing others down.

We have to have a notion of what is good in order to evaluate those outcomes. My argument is that various personal autonomy is a central concept to various utilitarian accounts of the good and as such there is nothing contradictory in holding a consequentialist viewpoint and valuing personal autonomy.

I get what you're driving at with evaluative freedom but this is all entailed by my account of autonomy which is more than the ability to act but the freedom to decide.

As I have stated up thread in the context of evaluating the moral outcome of a random killing consequentialism is not a decision making theory, it is a method by which we can evaluate the goodness of the act post hoc. So it is wrong to suggest an outcome is desired more desirable. And yet the outcome is not desirable, firstly as mentioned the potential suffering a random killer prevents is going to be understated in relation to the violation of a persons ability to decide the manner of their own death.

There is however a teleological component albeit one that admits it may be better to accept some other decision making process because of the burden of consequentialist calculations but we can not aim at a morally good outcome from a random killing or it isn't a random killing.

Our disagreement here is regarding the autonomy of the victim in determining whether their life is worth living so we can disregard the good that others may derive from this random killing. In any case your presentation here has some difficulties, if everyone is generally happy bar this one guy who's doing the random killing?

My argument is pretty straightforward that the individual is best placed to decide whether their life is worth living, even in the above case.

Was sex-before-marriage immoral before people changed to accepting that it was actually moral?
Indeed, if that person chose to give his organs, or died, it would be a moral choice/outcome. This is not to say that person has a moral obligation to the people dying of organ failure. He still has the personal liberty to choose for himself. I don't believe in any strong notions of moral obligation. At least until we can discount the possibility of solipsism: which we can't - thus value for decision-making freedom outweighs value for moral action.
If species with empathy can do more immoral things (e.g., pave concrete over multiple habitats) than species without it, then how is morality based on empathy in your conception of it?