This was one of my favourite EA Forum posts in a long time, thanks for sharing it!
Externalist realism is my preferred theory. Though I think we’d probably need something like God to exist in order for humans to have epistemic access to any normative facts. I’ve spent a bit of time reflecting on the “they understand everything there is to understand; they have seen through to the core of reality, and reality, it turns out, is really into helium. But they, unfortunately, aren’t.” style case. Of course it’d be really painful, but I think the appropriate response would be to understand the issue as one of human motivational brokenness. Something has gone wrong in my wiring which means my motivations are not properly functioning as they are out of kilter with what there is all-things-considered most reason to do, namely promote helium. That doesn’t mean that I’m to blame for this mismatch. But I’d hope that I’d then push this acknowledgement of my motivational brokenness into a course of actions to see if I can get my motivations to fall in line with the normative truth.
On the hell case (which feels personally relevant as an active Christian) I think I’d take a lot of solace during my internment that this is just what there is all-things-considered most reason to happen. If my dispositions/motivations fail to fall in line, then as above they are failing to properly function and I think/hope that acknowledging this would take some of the edge off the dissonance of not being able to understand why this is a just punishment.
Re: “my motivational system is broken, I’ll try to fix it” as the thing to say as an externalist realist: I think this makes sense as a response. The main thing that seems weird to me is the idea that you’re fundamentally “cut off” from seeing what’s good about helium, even though there’s nothing you don’t understand about reality. But it’s a weird case to imagine, and the relevant notions of “cut off” and “understanding” are tricky.
This was one of my favourite EA Forum posts in a long time, thanks for sharing it!
Externalist realism is my preferred theory. Though I think we’d probably need something like God to exist in order for humans to have epistemic access to any normative facts. I’ve spent a bit of time reflecting on the “they understand everything there is to understand; they have seen through to the core of reality, and reality, it turns out, is really into helium. But they, unfortunately, aren’t.” style case. Of course it’d be really painful, but I think the appropriate response would be to understand the issue as one of human motivational brokenness. Something has gone wrong in my wiring which means my motivations are not properly functioning as they are out of kilter with what there is all-things-considered most reason to do, namely promote helium. That doesn’t mean that I’m to blame for this mismatch. But I’d hope that I’d then push this acknowledgement of my motivational brokenness into a course of actions to see if I can get my motivations to fall in line with the normative truth.
On the hell case (which feels personally relevant as an active Christian) I think I’d take a lot of solace during my internment that this is just what there is all-things-considered most reason to happen. If my dispositions/motivations fail to fall in line, then as above they are failing to properly function and I think/hope that acknowledging this would take some of the edge off the dissonance of not being able to understand why this is a just punishment.
Glad to hear it :)
Re: “my motivational system is broken, I’ll try to fix it” as the thing to say as an externalist realist: I think this makes sense as a response. The main thing that seems weird to me is the idea that you’re fundamentally “cut off” from seeing what’s good about helium, even though there’s nothing you don’t understand about reality. But it’s a weird case to imagine, and the relevant notions of “cut off” and “understanding” are tricky.