Moral anti-realists think that questions about how people ought to act are fundamentally confused. For an anti-realist, the only legitimate questions about morality are empirical.
Anti-realists deny that there is such thing as true moral claims, but they don’t think morality is fundamentally confused. There have been many anti-realist philosophers who have proposed some form of ethics: R.M. Hare, J.L. Mackie, the existentialists, etc.
Consistent is not the same as principled. Of course I believe in internal consistency. But principled morality is no more rational than unprincipled morality.
What exactly do you mean by “principled” in this case?
Some EAs argue that killing animals for meat is the moral equivalent of murder. There are other examples outside EA: abortion is murder, taxation is theft.
I think many, hopefully most, of the people who say that have actual moral reasons for saying that. There is no fallacy in claiming a moral equivalency if you base it on actual reasons to believe that it is morally just as bad: it may in fact be the case that there is no significant moral difference between killing animals and killing people. Same goes for those who claim that abortion is murder, taxation is theft, etc. We should be challenged to think about whether, say, abortion is morally bad in the same way that murder is (and if not then why), because sometimes people’s beliefs are inconsistent, and because it very well may be the case that, say, abortion is morally bad in the same way that murder is. Of course, these kinds of arguments should be developed further rather than shortened into (fallacious) assertions. However, I don’t see this argument structure as central to the issue of counterintuitive moral conclusions.
Consequentialism would require building a definition of consciousness into the utility function. Many definitions of consciousness, such as “complexity” or “integration”, would fall apart in extreme cases.
I don’t think those are nearly good enough definitions of consciousness either. The consequentialist is usually concerned with sentience—whether there is “something that it’s like to be” a particular entity. If we decide that there is something that it’s like to be a simple system then we will value their experiences, although in this case it’s no longer so counterintuitive, because we can imagine what it’s like to be a simple system and we can empathize with them. While it’s difficult to find a formal definition for consciousness, and also very difficult to determine what sorts of physical substances and structures are responsible for consciousness, we do have a very clear idea in our heads of what it means to be conscious, and we can easily conceive of the difference between something that is conscious and something that is physically identical but not conscious (e.g. a p-zombie).
Anti-realists deny that there is such thing as true moral claims, but they don’t think morality is fundamentally confused. There have been many anti-realist philosophers who have proposed some form of ethics: R.M. Hare, J.L. Mackie, the existentialists, etc.
What exactly do you mean by “principled” in this case?
I think many, hopefully most, of the people who say that have actual moral reasons for saying that. There is no fallacy in claiming a moral equivalency if you base it on actual reasons to believe that it is morally just as bad: it may in fact be the case that there is no significant moral difference between killing animals and killing people. Same goes for those who claim that abortion is murder, taxation is theft, etc. We should be challenged to think about whether, say, abortion is morally bad in the same way that murder is (and if not then why), because sometimes people’s beliefs are inconsistent, and because it very well may be the case that, say, abortion is morally bad in the same way that murder is. Of course, these kinds of arguments should be developed further rather than shortened into (fallacious) assertions. However, I don’t see this argument structure as central to the issue of counterintuitive moral conclusions.
I don’t think those are nearly good enough definitions of consciousness either. The consequentialist is usually concerned with sentience—whether there is “something that it’s like to be” a particular entity. If we decide that there is something that it’s like to be a simple system then we will value their experiences, although in this case it’s no longer so counterintuitive, because we can imagine what it’s like to be a simple system and we can empathize with them. While it’s difficult to find a formal definition for consciousness, and also very difficult to determine what sorts of physical substances and structures are responsible for consciousness, we do have a very clear idea in our heads of what it means to be conscious, and we can easily conceive of the difference between something that is conscious and something that is physically identical but not conscious (e.g. a p-zombie).