first of all, thanks for engaging and the offer in the end. If you want to continue the discussion feel free to reach out via PM.
I think there is some confusion about my and also Spencer Greenberg’s position. Afaik, we are both moral anti-realists and not suggesting that moral realism is a tenable position. Without presuming to know much about Spencer, I have taken his stance in the post to be that he did not want to “argue” with realists in that post because even though he rejects their position, it requires a different type of argument than what he was after for that post. He wanted to draw attention to the fact that moral anti-realism and utilitarian value monism doesn’t necessarily and “naturally” go well together. Many of the statements he heard from people in the EA community were confusing to him not because anti-realism is confusing but being anti-realist and steadfastly holding on to value monism was, given that we empirically seem to value many more things than just one “super value” such as “welfare” and that there is no inherent obligation that we “should” only value one “super value”. He elaborates that also in another post.
My point was also mainly to point out that we should see moral theories as instruments that can help us get us more of what we value. They can help us reach some end-in-view and be evaluated in this regard, anything else is specious.
From my perspective, adopting classic utilitarianism can be very limiting because it can oversimplify and obscure what we actually care about in a given situation. It’s maybe useful as a helpful guide for considering what should be important but I am trying to not delude myself that “welfare” must be the only thing I should care about. This would be akin to a prematureclosure of inquiry into the specific situation at hand. I cannot and will never be able to fully anticipate all relevant details and aspects of a real world situation, so how can I be a priori certain that there is only one value I should care about?
If you are interested in this kind of position, feel free to check out: Ulrich, W. (2006). Critical Pragmatism: A New Approach to Professional and Business Ethics. In Interdisciplinary Yearbook for Business Ethics. V. 1, v. 1,. Peter Lang Pub Inc.
Hey Devin,
first of all, thanks for engaging and the offer in the end. If you want to continue the discussion feel free to reach out via PM.
I think there is some confusion about my and also Spencer Greenberg’s position. Afaik, we are both moral anti-realists and not suggesting that moral realism is a tenable position. Without presuming to know much about Spencer, I have taken his stance in the post to be that he did not want to “argue” with realists in that post because even though he rejects their position, it requires a different type of argument than what he was after for that post. He wanted to draw attention to the fact that moral anti-realism and utilitarian value monism doesn’t necessarily and “naturally” go well together. Many of the statements he heard from people in the EA community were confusing to him not because anti-realism is confusing but being anti-realist and steadfastly holding on to value monism was, given that we empirically seem to value many more things than just one “super value” such as “welfare” and that there is no inherent obligation that we “should” only value one “super value”. He elaborates that also in another post.
My point was also mainly to point out that we should see moral theories as instruments that can help us get us more of what we value. They can help us reach some end-in-view and be evaluated in this regard, anything else is specious.
From my perspective, adopting classic utilitarianism can be very limiting because it can oversimplify and obscure what we actually care about in a given situation. It’s maybe useful as a helpful guide for considering what should be important but I am trying to not delude myself that “welfare” must be the only thing I should care about. This would be akin to a premature closure of inquiry into the specific situation at hand. I cannot and will never be able to fully anticipate all relevant details and aspects of a real world situation, so how can I be a priori certain that there is only one value I should care about?
If you are interested in this kind of position, feel free to check out: Ulrich, W. (2006). Critical Pragmatism: A New Approach to Professional and Business Ethics. In Interdisciplinary Yearbook for Business Ethics. V. 1, v. 1,. Peter Lang Pub Inc.