Why am I confident in moral uncertainty? People do update their morality over time [...]
Oh, when you said “Effective altruists have centred around some ideas that are correct (longtermism, moral uncertainty, etc.)”, I assumed (perhaps mistakenly) that by “moral uncertainty” you meant something vaguely like the idea that “We should take moral uncertainty seriously, and think carefully about how best to handle it, rather than necessarily just going with whatever moral theory currently seems best to us.”
So not just the idea that we can’t be certain about morality (which I’d be happy to say is just “correct”), but also the idea that that fact should change our behaviour is substantial ways. I think that both of those ideas are surprisingly rare outside of EA, but the latter one is rarer, and perhaps more distinctive to EA (though not unique to EA, as there are some non-EA philosophers who’ve done relevant work in that area).
On my “inside-view”, the idea that we should “take moral uncertainty seriously” also seems extremely hard to contest. But I move a little away from such confidence, and probably wouldn’t simply call it “correct”, due to the fact that most non-EAs don’t seem to explicitly endorse something clearly like that idea. (Though maybe they endorse somewhat similar ideas in practice, even just via ideas like “agree to disagree”.)
Oh, when you said “Effective altruists have centred around some ideas that are correct (longtermism, moral uncertainty, etc.)”, I assumed (perhaps mistakenly) that by “moral uncertainty” you meant something vaguely like the idea that “We should take moral uncertainty seriously, and think carefully about how best to handle it, rather than necessarily just going with whatever moral theory currently seems best to us.”
So not just the idea that we can’t be certain about morality (which I’d be happy to say is just “correct”), but also the idea that that fact should change our behaviour is substantial ways. I think that both of those ideas are surprisingly rare outside of EA, but the latter one is rarer, and perhaps more distinctive to EA (though not unique to EA, as there are some non-EA philosophers who’ve done relevant work in that area).
On my “inside-view”, the idea that we should “take moral uncertainty seriously” also seems extremely hard to contest. But I move a little away from such confidence, and probably wouldn’t simply call it “correct”, due to the fact that most non-EAs don’t seem to explicitly endorse something clearly like that idea. (Though maybe they endorse somewhat similar ideas in practice, even just via ideas like “agree to disagree”.)