On the first pointâthat seems right; I think in a discussion like this, there can be a lot of confusion and conflation about what is meant by net negative welfare, lives worth living/âbarely worth living, too what degree one can and should trust empirical assessments about the welfare of animals, etc. - my best guess is that people are typically âsomewhatâ risk-averse and âsomewhatâ negative leaning consequentialist; so the bar for empirical evidence to show that chickens live net positive lives is intuitively set higher; both for how solid it is as well as how positive. That being said, I do think one can have distrust in intuitions as information for moral judgments while leaning on them for empirical questionsâthat doesnât seem inherently at odds for me. (I do think that the latter still clashes with âusing evidence and reason,â of course, but can be âexplained forâ with risk aversion and negative-leaning positionsâwhich would change what â⌠to do the most goodâ means). But at this point, I am just speculating about what people are thinking about in making these arguments.
On the second point; my impression is that EAs rarely completely abandon moral intuition. They donât consider it particularly trustworthy, but donât think itâs useless either. It serves some function (e.g., find the internally consistent theory that is least counterintuitive or that satisfies the most or the deepest lying moral intuitions), but then theyâd basically have the theory take it from there (in theoretical discussion; once again, this tends to be different when actually being acted upon). I agree that it is plausibly arbitrary (where to draw the line at which to abandon moral intuitions; others might disagree with calling that arbitrary); but I donât think it usually serves prior commitments (in my experience, EAs are the social impact group that are most open to just changing commitments). That being said, I do think that some form of this (drawing a seemingly arbitrary line from where to not trust moral intuition) is true for effectively everyone who doesnât completely lean into moral intuitionism. My best guess explanation here is basically what I expressed in the last three points of my initial comment; most (perhaps all) EAs I am thinking of in this context are âdoing-goodâ first; and underlying that is a strong moral compass/âintuition that can be at real practical tension with trying to abandon moral intuition as information, so they try to find the right balance; with the balance being on-average more in favor of a well reasoned through theory vs. intuition; but not completely.
On the first pointâthat seems right; I think in a discussion like this, there can be a lot of confusion and conflation about what is meant by net negative welfare, lives worth living/âbarely worth living, too what degree one can and should trust empirical assessments about the welfare of animals, etc. - my best guess is that people are typically âsomewhatâ risk-averse and âsomewhatâ negative leaning consequentialist; so the bar for empirical evidence to show that chickens live net positive lives is intuitively set higher; both for how solid it is as well as how positive. That being said, I do think one can have distrust in intuitions as information for moral judgments while leaning on them for empirical questionsâthat doesnât seem inherently at odds for me. (I do think that the latter still clashes with âusing evidence and reason,â of course, but can be âexplained forâ with risk aversion and negative-leaning positionsâwhich would change what â⌠to do the most goodâ means). But at this point, I am just speculating about what people are thinking about in making these arguments.
On the second point; my impression is that EAs rarely completely abandon moral intuition. They donât consider it particularly trustworthy, but donât think itâs useless either. It serves some function (e.g., find the internally consistent theory that is least counterintuitive or that satisfies the most or the deepest lying moral intuitions), but then theyâd basically have the theory take it from there (in theoretical discussion; once again, this tends to be different when actually being acted upon). I agree that it is plausibly arbitrary (where to draw the line at which to abandon moral intuitions; others might disagree with calling that arbitrary); but I donât think it usually serves prior commitments (in my experience, EAs are the social impact group that are most open to just changing commitments). That being said, I do think that some form of this (drawing a seemingly arbitrary line from where to not trust moral intuition) is true for effectively everyone who doesnât completely lean into moral intuitionism. My best guess explanation here is basically what I expressed in the last three points of my initial comment; most (perhaps all) EAs I am thinking of in this context are âdoing-goodâ first; and underlying that is a strong moral compass/âintuition that can be at real practical tension with trying to abandon moral intuition as information, so they try to find the right balance; with the balance being on-average more in favor of a well reasoned through theory vs. intuition; but not completely.