Could the seeming contradiction be resolved by greater specificity of statements?
For example, rather than abandoning “Everyone should sell everything that begins with a ‘C’, but nothing that begins with an ‘A’.” as a norm, we might realize we underspecified it to begin with and really meant “Everyone should sell everything that is called by a word in English that begins with a ‘C’, but nothing that begins with an ‘A’ in English.”. We could get even more specific if objections remained until we were not at risk of under specifying what we mean and suffering from relativity.
Yes, good point. I agree that sufficient specification can make time discounting compatible with moral realism.
One would have to specify an inertial system, from which to measure time. (That would be equivalent to specifying the language to English for example.)
Then we would not have a logical contradiction anymore, which weakens my claim, but we would still have something I would find unplausible: An inertial system that is preferred by the correct moral theory, even though it is not preferred by the laws of physics.
Could the seeming contradiction be resolved by greater specificity of statements?
For example, rather than abandoning “Everyone should sell everything that begins with a ‘C’, but nothing that begins with an ‘A’.” as a norm, we might realize we underspecified it to begin with and really meant “Everyone should sell everything that is called by a word in English that begins with a ‘C’, but nothing that begins with an ‘A’ in English.”. We could get even more specific if objections remained until we were not at risk of under specifying what we mean and suffering from relativity.
In the same vein, maybe the contradiction of the through experiment could be resolved by being more specific and including more context about the world. For example, cf. this attempt at thinking about preferences as conditioned on the entire state of the world. Maybe the same sort of technique could be applied here.
Yes, good point. I agree that sufficient specification can make time discounting compatible with moral realism.
One would have to specify an inertial system, from which to measure time. (That would be equivalent to specifying the language to English for example.)
Then we would not have a logical contradiction anymore, which weakens my claim, but we would still have something I would find unplausible: An inertial system that is preferred by the correct moral theory, even though it is not preferred by the laws of physics.