It’s quite remarkable how we hold ideas to different standards in different contexts. Imagine, for instance, a politician that openly endorses CU. Her opponents would immediately attack the worst implications: “So you would torture a child in order to create ten new brains that experience extremely intense orgasms?” The politician, being honest, says yes, and that’s the end of her career.
By contrast, EA discourse and philosophical discourse is strikingly lenient when it comes to counterintuitive implications of such theories. (I’m not saying anything about which standards are better, and of course this does not only apply to CU.)
Who is the “we” you are talking about? I imagine the people who end that politician’s career would not be EAs. So it seems like your example is an example of different people having different standards, not the same people having different standards in different contexts.
Consider the example of someone making a symmetric argument against cosmopolitanism:
It’s quite remarkable how we hold ideas to different standards in different contexts. Imagine, for instance, a US politician that openly endorses caring about all humans equally regardless of where they are located . Her opponents would immediately attack the worst implications: “So you would prefer money that would go to local schools and homeless shelters be sent overseas to foreign countries?” The politician, being honest, says yes, and that’s the end of her career.
I think we should have some deference to commonsensical intuitions and pluralist beliefs (narrowly construed), but it will likely be a mistake to give those perspectives significant deference.
Great post—thanks a lot for writing this up!
It’s quite remarkable how we hold ideas to different standards in different contexts. Imagine, for instance, a politician that openly endorses CU. Her opponents would immediately attack the worst implications: “So you would torture a child in order to create ten new brains that experience extremely intense orgasms?” The politician, being honest, says yes, and that’s the end of her career.
By contrast, EA discourse and philosophical discourse is strikingly lenient when it comes to counterintuitive implications of such theories. (I’m not saying anything about which standards are better, and of course this does not only apply to CU.)
Who is the “we” you are talking about? I imagine the people who end that politician’s career would not be EAs. So it seems like your example is an example of different people having different standards, not the same people having different standards in different contexts.
Fair point—the “we” was something like “people in general”.
Consider the example of someone making a symmetric argument against cosmopolitanism:
I think we should have some deference to commonsensical intuitions and pluralist beliefs (narrowly construed), but it will likely be a mistake to give those perspectives significant deference.