Or, more precisely, "Do believe that other people have any intrinsic value?"Forrest wrote:You are still assuming that only self-interested behavior is rational, which is equivalent to assuming that only self-interested behavior is intrinsically good[/qutoe]
Not necessarily. Utility, as I understand it, includes personal preference. If an individual has a personal preference for the well-being of others, he will act with that in mind. Likewise, if a person has a personal preference for being outdoors on sunny days, he'll act with that in mind as well.
Forrest wrote:But that question, which might be shortened to "should I bother to care about other people just for their own sake?", is just the same question as "do other people have any intrinsic value?"
But then, you've already shown that the intrinsic value of another person isn't necessarily the bottom line for whether a decision is altruistic or not. You set forth the assumption that it is wrong to kill one innocent person (whatever "innocent" means) in order to preserve the lives of a multitude of other (presumably equally "innocent") persons. If that's the case, then we must conclude that intentionally ending a person's life is several times more intrinsically bad than allowing a person's life to end accidentally-- it's far more important to avoid killing someone than to keep someone alive.
But then, I keep forgetting that we're discussing a world in which moral laws are just as immutable as physical ones, and all natural laws are perfectly understood-- a state I have difficulty picturing. In that environment, a refusal to conform to known, demonstrable moral laws is as irrational as refusing to conform to known, demonstrable physical laws. Once a degree of uncertainty is introduced, however, things change. If a course of action can't be proven morally correct, then a rational person need not necessarily follow it.