Report comment

I would say that rather than including built-in acceptance of failures, a well-designed moral “system” might rather be one anyone can reasonably follow without being a saint.

That said, since I am convinced by, and am arguing in favor of the moral realist position, it doesn’t really make sense for me to even say “my” moral system is x and “your” moral system is y. Morality isn’t reasonable or unreasonable or well-designed or poorly designed; it just is. At lest, that seems to be an unavoidable consequence of maintaining that it is objective.

Report comment

Report comment

To me, there is a vast ethical gulf separating “killing” and “letting die.” We all let people die all the time. Every time you don’t donate all your money to malaria eradication efforts you are letting people die. It may be virtuous in a supererogatory way to donate all your money, but it’s not unethical not to.

Related question: is it okay to steal the life savings of some random first-world person and donate it all to malaria eradication efforts? It seems obviously to me to be wrong, even though it produces “better” results: first world guy can’t retire but is still alive while, thousands of third-world children survive. Yet it’s still wrong.

You can give all of your own money to fight malaria–this is equivalent to flipping the switch so the train hits you in the version of the problem that allows the suicide option.

Scott tends to take it to the extreme to prove the point: “if you’re not okay killing one to save five, what about one to save a million, or one to save a billion? etc.” This is a good point, but I think it reveals the problematic aspect of his move to collapse “right and wrong” and “good and bad.”

I’m pretty sure we can all of think of an example where an ethically wrong action might produce a “good” result–as in, result in a world which everyone would agree was better. This means these two things are distinct. Maybe it’s a GOOD idea to kill one innocent person if, in so doing, you can save one million innocent people, but that doesn’t make it right.

If this seems counterintuitive, I’d suggest to try thinking of it this way: imagine YOU are the one whose organs are going to be harvested to save many lives, that YOU are the one person sitting on the train track when a bystander switches the lines so that the train hits you instead of five others on another track.

In such a case, I would not only feel that I was a victim of murder, but that I would even be justified in killing the organ harvester or switch flipper to save my life. It would be virtuous of me to voluntarily OFFER my life to save a greater number, but to force me to give it is always wrong, if not always bad in terms of results.

Report comment

Report comment

If they do stay the same, then there is an instrumentality rational benefit in treating them as predictable. There is no benefit in treating them as unpredictable – in fact, there is little you can do about unpredictability. So there is nett benefit in treating them as predictable.

You seem to be implicitly assuming that only a guaranteed benefit will do.

> There is a difference in my head between Truths of Faith and Truths of Reason.

There is a difference in my head between epistemological reason and instrumental reason.

> I thought it would be obvious from my posistion which are which.As I said earlier, lack of groundedness means that anti-skeptical truth claims are basically self-refuting- if you assume them, you get to their contrary.

You do seem to be under the impression that the insufficient justification, or circular justification in an argument implies the falsity of the conclusion: it doesn’t. “2+2=4, therefore 2+2=4″ is not a valid way of arguing that “2+2=4″, but the conclusion is sound,

Sceptical arguments, however, can be, and often are self undermining, because the sceptic argues against kinds of justification that they need to make their own points.

> This is because the wrongness of circular arguments

You need to understand the soundness/validity distinction.

> and the wrongness of infinitist arguments are clear by the fact they are no better than contrary arguments of the same kind, so believing them legitimate would lead to a contradiction.Reasoning is always about something outside the brain. “Reasoning about reasoning” is either (depending on whether a faith-based or rational perspective is taken) reasoning about the brain,

Then reasoning is sometimes about the brain.

> or an attempt to discern a way to know something about externa lreality.“Instrumental rationality” with no connection to actual reality is not worthy of the name.

Well, it can keep you alive…

> My two roads example was meant to be a clarification, not an argument. Deciding to act AS IF something is true without evidence might be rational, but BELIEVING said thing is true without evidence never is.

Never us instrumental rational, or never is epistemically rational?

>To ignore correspondence reality is to ignore all sorts of dangerous possibilities- that you might ‘blink’ out of existence at a moment’s notice, for example- implied by skepticism. It is irrational.I’m going to devote a new post to axioms.

So what am I supposed to do with that multitude of possibilities? The Matrix Lords might wide me out for not eating fish on Friday, but they might equally punish me for not eating bananas. What can I do with a multitude of unknown possibilities? as far as I can see, they sum to “don’t be too sure about anything”.

Report comment

Report comment

+ like

Perhaps popularly known as “Honesty/etc is the best policy”. ‘Policy’ seems very accurate here; usually applied routinely but subject to exception for good reason. It seems a good answer to the ‘fat man problem': you can’t be reasonably sure of the result, or of your own judgement, so better follow the usual policy/reflex of not causing certain harm for uncertain good.

Elsewhere in this thread, the term ‘lesser evil’ might fit in, even if to be dismissed.

Report comment

Report comment

Report comment