I’ve recently updated toward moral antirealism. You’re not using the terms moral antirealism, moral realism, or metaethics in the essay, so I’m not sure whether your argument is meant as one for moral realism or whether you just want to argue what not all ethical systems are equally powerful – some are more inconsistent, more complex, more unstable, etc. than others – and the latter view is one I share.
“I reject your notion that there is no objective measure by which one is better than the other. If a culture’s ethical code was to brutally maim innocent humans, we don’t say ‘We disagree with that but it’s happening in another culture so it’s ok, who are we to say that our version of morality is better?’ We would just say that they are wrong.”
I would say neither. My morality – probably one shared by many EAs and many, but fewer, people outside EA – is that I care enormously, incomparably more about the suffering of those innocent humans than I care about respecting cultures, traditions, ethical systems, etc., so – other options and opportunity costs aside – I would disagree and intervene decisively, but I wouldn’t feel any need or justification to claim that their morals are factually wrong. This is also my world to shape.
You’re banking on the general moral consensus just being one that favours you, or coincides with your subjectivist take on morality. There can be no moral ‘progress’ if that is the case. We could be completely wrong when we say taking slaves is a bad thing, if the world was under ISIS control and the consensus shared by most people is that morality comes from a holy book.
Having a wide consensus for one’s view is certainly an advantage, but I don’t see how the rest follows from that. The direction that we want to call progress would just depend on what each of us sees as progress.
To use Brian’s article as an example, this would, to me, include interventions among wild animals for example with vaccines and birth control, but that’s probably antithetical to the idea of progress of many environmentalists and even Gene Roddenberry.
What do you mean by being “wrong” about the badness of slavery? Maybe that it would be unwise to address the problem of slavery under an ISIS-like regime because it would have zero tractability and keep us from implementing more tractable improvements since we would be executed?
I’ve recently updated toward moral antirealism. You’re not using the terms moral antirealism, moral realism, or metaethics in the essay, so I’m not sure whether your argument is meant as one for moral realism or whether you just want to argue what not all ethical systems are equally powerful – some are more inconsistent, more complex, more unstable, etc. than others – and the latter view is one I share.
“I reject your notion that there is no objective measure by which one is better than the other. If a culture’s ethical code was to brutally maim innocent humans, we don’t say ‘We disagree with that but it’s happening in another culture so it’s ok, who are we to say that our version of morality is better?’ We would just say that they are wrong.”
I would say neither. My morality – probably one shared by many EAs and many, but fewer, people outside EA – is that I care enormously, incomparably more about the suffering of those innocent humans than I care about respecting cultures, traditions, ethical systems, etc., so – other options and opportunity costs aside – I would disagree and intervene decisively, but I wouldn’t feel any need or justification to claim that their morals are factually wrong. This is also my world to shape.
That’s not to say that I wouldn’t compromise for strategic purposes.
You’re banking on the general moral consensus just being one that favours you, or coincides with your subjectivist take on morality. There can be no moral ‘progress’ if that is the case. We could be completely wrong when we say taking slaves is a bad thing, if the world was under ISIS control and the consensus shared by most people is that morality comes from a holy book.
Having a wide consensus for one’s view is certainly an advantage, but I don’t see how the rest follows from that. The direction that we want to call progress would just depend on what each of us sees as progress.
To use Brian’s article as an example, this would, to me, include interventions among wild animals for example with vaccines and birth control, but that’s probably antithetical to the idea of progress of many environmentalists and even Gene Roddenberry.
What do you mean by being “wrong” about the badness of slavery? Maybe that it would be unwise to address the problem of slavery under an ISIS-like regime because it would have zero tractability and keep us from implementing more tractable improvements since we would be executed?
.