My one criticism to offer after reading this is in regard to the way you choose to answer “Yes” to the question of whether people “have obligations” (which I put in quotes to communicate the fact that the phrase could be interpreted in different ways such that the correct answer to the question could be either yes or no depending on the interpretation):
“So am I obligated to do anything?
“Yes. You have legal obligations to follow the laws, have epistemic obligations to believe the truth, have deontological obligations not to lie under any circumstance, have utilitarian obligations to donate as much of your income as you can manage, etc… You’re under millions of potential obligations – one for each possible standard that can evaluate actions. Some of these may be nonsensical, like an anti-utilitarian obligation to maximize suffering or an obligation to cook spaghetti for each meal. But all of these obligations are there, even if they’re contradictory. Chances are you just don’t care about most of them.”
While I can see how this way of defining what it means to have an obligation can definitely be useful when discussing moral philosophy and bring clarity to said discussions, I think it’s worth pointing out that how it could potentially be quite confusing when talking with people who aren’t familiar with your specific definition / the specific meaning you use.
For example, if you ask most people, “Am I obligated to not commit murder?” they would say, “Yes, of course.” And if you ask them, “Am I obligated to commit murder?” they would say, “No, of course not.”
You would answer yes to both, saying that you are obligated to not commit murder by (or according to) some moral standards/theories and are obligated to commit murder by some others.
To most people (who are not familiar with how you are using the language), this would appear contradictory (again: to say that you are obligated both to do and not to do X).
And the second note is that when laypeople say, “No, I am not obligated to commit murder,” you wouldn’t be inclined to say that they are wrong (because you don’t interpret what they are trying to say so uncharitably), but rather would see that clearly they meant something else than the meaning that you explained in the article above that you would assign to these words.
My interpretation of their statement that they are not obligated to commit murder would be (said in one way) that they do not care about any of the moral standards that obligate them to commit murder. Said differently, they are saying that in order to fulfill or achieve their values, people shouldn’t murder others (at least in general), because murdering people would actually be a counter-productive way to cause what they desire to happen to happen.
Comment 2:
My one criticism to offer after reading this is in regard to the way you choose to answer “Yes” to the question of whether people “have obligations” (which I put in quotes to communicate the fact that the phrase could be interpreted in different ways such that the correct answer to the question could be either yes or no depending on the interpretation):
While I can see how this way of defining what it means to have an obligation can definitely be useful when discussing moral philosophy and bring clarity to said discussions, I think it’s worth pointing out that how it could potentially be quite confusing when talking with people who aren’t familiar with your specific definition / the specific meaning you use.
For example, if you ask most people, “Am I obligated to not commit murder?” they would say, “Yes, of course.” And if you ask them, “Am I obligated to commit murder?” they would say, “No, of course not.”
You would answer yes to both, saying that you are obligated to not commit murder by (or according to) some moral standards/theories and are obligated to commit murder by some others.
To most people (who are not familiar with how you are using the language), this would appear contradictory (again: to say that you are obligated both to do and not to do X).
And the second note is that when laypeople say, “No, I am not obligated to commit murder,” you wouldn’t be inclined to say that they are wrong (because you don’t interpret what they are trying to say so uncharitably), but rather would see that clearly they meant something else than the meaning that you explained in the article above that you would assign to these words.
My interpretation of their statement that they are not obligated to commit murder would be (said in one way) that they do not care about any of the moral standards that obligate them to commit murder. Said differently, they are saying that in order to fulfill or achieve their values, people shouldn’t murder others (at least in general), because murdering people would actually be a counter-productive way to cause what they desire to happen to happen.