Are you disagreeing with my constraint on warranted hostility? As I say in the linked post on that, I think itās warranted to be hostile towards naive instrumentalism, since itās actually unreasonable for limited human agents to use that as their decision procedure. But thatās no part of utilitarianism per se.
You say: it could turn out badly to recommend X, if too many people would irrationally combine it with Y, and X+Y has bad effects. I agree. Thatās a good reason for being cautious about communicating X without simultaneously communicating not-Y. But that doesnāt warrant hostility towards X, e.g. philosophical judgments that X is ādeeply appallingā (something many philosophers claim about utilitarianism, which I think is plainly unwarranted).
Thereās a difference between thinking āthere are risks to communicating X to people with severe misunderstandingsā and āX is inherently appallingā. What baffles me is philosophers who claim the latter, when X = utilitarianism (and even more strongly, for X = EA).
Mmm, while I can understand āappallingā or ādeeply appallingā, I donāt think āinherently appallingā makes sense to me (at least coming from philosophers, who should be careful about their language use). I guess you didnāt use that phrase in the original post and now Iām wondering if itās a precise quote.
(Iād also missed the fact that these were philosophical judgements, which makes me think itās reasonable to hold them to higher standards than otherwise.)
I donāt think thereās any such thing as non-inherent appallingness. To judge X as warranting moral disgust, revulsion, etc. seems a form of intrinsic evaluation (attributing a form of extreme vice rather than mere instrumental badness).
Hence the paradigmatic examples being things like racist attitudes, not things likeā¦ optimism about the prospects were one to implement communism.
I can see where youāre coming from, but Iām not sure I agree. People would be appalled by restaurant staff not washing their hands after going to the toilet, and I think this is because itās instrumentally bad (in an uncooperative way + may make people ill) rather than because itās extreme vice.
But negligence /ā lack of concern for obvious risks to others is a classic form of vice? (In this case, the connection to toilet waste may amplify disgust reactions, for obvious evolutionary reasons.)
If you specify that the staff are from a distant tribe that never learned about basic hygiene facts, I think people would cease to be āappalledā in the same way, and instead just feel that the situation was very lamentable. (Maybe theyād instead blame the restaurant owner for not taking care to educate their staff, depending on whether the owner plausibly āshould have known betterā.)
Thanks, that helped me sharpen my intuitions about what triggers the āappalledā reaction.
I think Iām still left with: People may very reasonably say that fraud in the service of effective altruism is appalling. Then itās pretty normal and understandable (even if by my lights unreasonable) to label as āappallingā things which you think will predictably lead others to appalling action.
Are you disagreeing with my constraint on warranted hostility? As I say in the linked post on that, I think itās warranted to be hostile towards naive instrumentalism, since itās actually unreasonable for limited human agents to use that as their decision procedure. But thatās no part of utilitarianism per se.
You say: it could turn out badly to recommend X, if too many people would irrationally combine it with Y, and X+Y has bad effects. I agree. Thatās a good reason for being cautious about communicating X without simultaneously communicating not-Y. But that doesnāt warrant hostility towards X, e.g. philosophical judgments that X is ādeeply appallingā (something many philosophers claim about utilitarianism, which I think is plainly unwarranted).
Thereās a difference between thinking āthere are risks to communicating X to people with severe misunderstandingsā and āX is inherently appallingā. What baffles me is philosophers who claim the latter, when X = utilitarianism (and even more strongly, for X = EA).
Mmm, while I can understand āappallingā or ādeeply appallingā, I donāt think āinherently appallingā makes sense to me (at least coming from philosophers, who should be careful about their language use). I guess you didnāt use that phrase in the original post and now Iām wondering if itās a precise quote.
(Iād also missed the fact that these were philosophical judgements, which makes me think itās reasonable to hold them to higher standards than otherwise.)
I donāt think thereās any such thing as non-inherent appallingness. To judge X as warranting moral disgust, revulsion, etc. seems a form of intrinsic evaluation (attributing a form of extreme vice rather than mere instrumental badness).
Hence the paradigmatic examples being things like racist attitudes, not things likeā¦ optimism about the prospects were one to implement communism.
I can see where youāre coming from, but Iām not sure I agree. People would be appalled by restaurant staff not washing their hands after going to the toilet, and I think this is because itās instrumentally bad (in an uncooperative way + may make people ill) rather than because itās extreme vice.
But negligence /ā lack of concern for obvious risks to others is a classic form of vice? (In this case, the connection to toilet waste may amplify disgust reactions, for obvious evolutionary reasons.)
If you specify that the staff are from a distant tribe that never learned about basic hygiene facts, I think people would cease to be āappalledā in the same way, and instead just feel that the situation was very lamentable. (Maybe theyād instead blame the restaurant owner for not taking care to educate their staff, depending on whether the owner plausibly āshould have known betterā.)
Thanks, that helped me sharpen my intuitions about what triggers the āappalledā reaction.
I think Iām still left with: People may very reasonably say that fraud in the service of effective altruism is appalling. Then itās pretty normal and understandable (even if by my lights unreasonable) to label as āappallingā things which you think will predictably lead others to appalling action.
I mean, lots of fallacious reasoning is ānormal and understandableā, but Iām still confused when philosophers do itāI expect better from them!