Thanks, nice post. I agree with most of this. I’d particularly like to see more of an emphasis on the distinction between the goodness of acts and of people.
There are a couple of your recommendations which I think have significant costs, which I’ll point out. That’s not to say that I think it would be wrong to move in the direction of the recommendation, but I think it may well be right to disregard some reasonable proportion of the time. I’m also arguing in defence of things that I will sometimes do: I like to think this is mostly that I do them because I think they are reasonable, but there may be an element of my defending them because I behave that way.
-Refrain from posting things that assume that consequentialism is true
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Terminology from economics and philosophy is often used even when it’s not strictly needed. This makes the conversation inaccessible to many. [...] Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
In both cases I see the the argument that these can be alienating, and that’s a cost which it’s important to keep in mind. But both can be useful for faster progress and dialogue when exploring ideas. Thinking just of consequences gives a focus to conversation; technical terms often give you a precision that it can be hard to achieve with everyday terms. So I think it’s reasonable to keep these tools available, but generally for private conversations where you know the people who might be reading.
I agree with you on technical language—we have to judge cases on an individual basis and be reasonable.
Less sure about the consequentialism, unless you know your talking to a consequentialist! If you want to evaluate an action from a narrow consequentialist perspective, can’t you just say so at the start?
Thanks, nice post. I agree with most of this. I’d particularly like to see more of an emphasis on the distinction between the goodness of acts and of people.
There are a couple of your recommendations which I think have significant costs, which I’ll point out. That’s not to say that I think it would be wrong to move in the direction of the recommendation, but I think it may well be right to disregard some reasonable proportion of the time. I’m also arguing in defence of things that I will sometimes do: I like to think this is mostly that I do them because I think they are reasonable, but there may be an element of my defending them because I behave that way.
In both cases I see the the argument that these can be alienating, and that’s a cost which it’s important to keep in mind. But both can be useful for faster progress and dialogue when exploring ideas. Thinking just of consequences gives a focus to conversation; technical terms often give you a precision that it can be hard to achieve with everyday terms. So I think it’s reasonable to keep these tools available, but generally for private conversations where you know the people who might be reading.
I agree with you on technical language—we have to judge cases on an individual basis and be reasonable.
Less sure about the consequentialism, unless you know your talking to a consequentialist! If you want to evaluate an action from a narrow consequentialist perspective, can’t you just say so at the start?