Thanks! I’m still grappling with putting the intuitions behind this post into words, so this is valuable feedback.
Personally, my heuristic in the example you describe is rolling with what I feel like. Considerations that go into that are:
1. Will it kill me? (I’m allergic to red meat) 2. Would I be actively disgusted eating it? (The case for most if not all non-vegetarian stuff.) 3. Do I lack the spoons to have a debate about this, given which amount of pushback/disappointment I expect from the host?
...and when all of them get a “no”: 4. Do I feel like my nutrient profile is sufficiently covered atm? Will this, or asking for a vegan alternative make me feel more alert and healthy? (I all-too-often default to lacto-vegetarianism in stressful times. Low-effort vegan foods tend to give me deficiencies (probably protein) that give me massive cheese cravings. From utilitarianism I learned to prioritize not feeling crap over always causing minimum harm.)
While studying philosophy in Uni, I also hated virtue ethics for years due to its intrinsic fuzziness.
Things that changed since then and turned it into a very attractive default: 1. Picking up a meditation habit that made my gut feeling more salient and coherent, and my verbal reasoning less loud/coercive. 2. Learning Focusing to a reasonable level of fluency. The mental motion of checking with my system 1 what the best course forward would be is pretty much the same as pausing to tune in to my felt sense and gauging where it draws me.
Thanks! I’m still grappling with putting the intuitions behind this post into words, so this is valuable feedback.
Personally, my heuristic in the example you describe is rolling with what I feel like. Considerations that go into that are:
1. Will it kill me? (I’m allergic to red meat)
2. Would I be actively disgusted eating it? (The case for most if not all non-vegetarian stuff.)
3. Do I lack the spoons to have a debate about this, given which amount of pushback/disappointment I expect from the host?
...and when all of them get a “no”:
4. Do I feel like my nutrient profile is sufficiently covered atm? Will this, or asking for a vegan alternative make me feel more alert and healthy? (I all-too-often default to lacto-vegetarianism in stressful times. Low-effort vegan foods tend to give me deficiencies (probably protein) that give me massive cheese cravings. From utilitarianism I learned to prioritize not feeling crap over always causing minimum harm.)
While studying philosophy in Uni, I also hated virtue ethics for years due to its intrinsic fuzziness.
Things that changed since then and turned it into a very attractive default:
1. Picking up a meditation habit that made my gut feeling more salient and coherent, and my verbal reasoning less loud/coercive.
2. Learning Focusing to a reasonable level of fluency. The mental motion of checking with my system 1 what the best course forward would be is pretty much the same as pausing to tune in to my felt sense and gauging where it draws me.