Sometimes I think philosophers could do better ethics work if they included surveying and working with the public as part of their tool kit . What do people actually think and how do they make trade-offs?
One specific example: I had a recent chat with a bunch of philosophers who said the standard view in philosophy is it impossible to have (or to technically formalise) a consequentialist view of justice based ethics. This confused me because in practice people do this all the time – you can find a bunch of justice based EAs and get them to make ethical trade-offs and it becomes pretty consequentialist pretty quickly (see here).
Making progress on ethics.
Sometimes I think philosophers could do better ethics work if they included surveying and working with the public as part of their tool kit . What do people actually think and how do they make trade-offs?
One specific example: I had a recent chat with a bunch of philosophers who said the standard view in philosophy is it impossible to have (or to technically formalise) a consequentialist view of justice based ethics. This confused me because in practice people do this all the time – you can find a bunch of justice based EAs and get them to make ethical trade-offs and it becomes pretty consequentialist pretty quickly (see here).