I suppose you could define “should” that way, but it’s not an adequate unpacking of what humans actually talk about when they talk about morality.
Agreed 100% with this.
Of course, it doesn’t follow that what humans talk about when we talk about morality has the properties we talk about it having, or even that it exists at all, any more than analogous things follow about what humans talk about when we talk about Santa Claus or YHWH.
you happen to care about(/prefer/terminally value) being moral.
To say that “I happen to care about being moral” implies that it could be some other way… that I might have happened to care about something other than being moral.
That is, it implies that instead of caring about “the life of [my] friends and [my] family and [my] Significant Other and [my]self” and etc. and etc. and etc., the superposition of which is morality (according to EY), I might have cared about… well, I don’t know, really. This account of morality is sufficiently unbounded that it’s unclear what it excludes that’s within the range of potential human values at all.
I mean, sure, it excludes sorting pebbles into prime-numbered heaps, for example. But for me to say “instead of caring about morality, I might have cared about sorting pebbles into prime-numbered heaps” is kind of misleading, since the truth is I was never going to care about it; it isn’t the sort of thing people care about. People aren’t Pebblesorters (at least, absent brain damage).
And it seems as though, if pebblesorting were the kind of thing that people sometimes cared about, then the account of morality being given would necessarily say “Well, pebblesorting is part of the complex structure of human value, and morality is that structure, and therefore caring about pebblesorting is part of caring about morality.”
If this account of morality doesn’t exclude anything that people might actually care about, and it seems like it doesn’t, then “I happen to care about being moral” is a misleading thing to say. It was never possible that I might care about anything else.
Well, psychopaths don’t seem to care about morality so much. So we can at least point to morality as a particular cluster among things people care about.
That’s just it; it’s not clear to me that we can, on this account.
Sure, there are things within morality that some people care about and other people don’t. Caring about video games is an aspect of morality, for example, and some people don’t care about video games. Caring about the happiness of other people is an aspect of morality, and some people (e.g., psychopaths) don’t care about that. And so on. But the things that they care about instead are also parts of morality, on this account.
But, OK, perhaps there’s some kind of moral hierarchy on this account. Perhaps it’s not possible to “be moral” on this account without, for example, caring about the happiness of other people… perhaps that’s necessary, though not sufficient.
In which case “I happen to care about being moral” means that I happen to care about a critical subset of the important things, as opposed to not caring about those things.
Agreed 100% with this.
Of course, it doesn’t follow that what humans talk about when we talk about morality has the properties we talk about it having, or even that it exists at all, any more than analogous things follow about what humans talk about when we talk about Santa Claus or YHWH.
To say that “I happen to care about being moral” implies that it could be some other way… that I might have happened to care about something other than being moral.
That is, it implies that instead of caring about “the life of [my] friends and [my] family and [my] Significant Other and [my]self” and etc. and etc. and etc., the superposition of which is morality (according to EY), I might have cared about… well, I don’t know, really. This account of morality is sufficiently unbounded that it’s unclear what it excludes that’s within the range of potential human values at all.
I mean, sure, it excludes sorting pebbles into prime-numbered heaps, for example. But for me to say “instead of caring about morality, I might have cared about sorting pebbles into prime-numbered heaps” is kind of misleading, since the truth is I was never going to care about it; it isn’t the sort of thing people care about. People aren’t Pebblesorters (at least, absent brain damage).
And it seems as though, if pebblesorting were the kind of thing that people sometimes cared about, then the account of morality being given would necessarily say “Well, pebblesorting is part of the complex structure of human value, and morality is that structure, and therefore caring about pebblesorting is part of caring about morality.”
If this account of morality doesn’t exclude anything that people might actually care about, and it seems like it doesn’t, then “I happen to care about being moral” is a misleading thing to say. It was never possible that I might care about anything else.
Well, psychopaths don’t seem to care about morality so much. So we can at least point to morality as a particular cluster among things people care about.
That’s just it; it’s not clear to me that we can, on this account.
Sure, there are things within morality that some people care about and other people don’t. Caring about video games is an aspect of morality, for example, and some people don’t care about video games. Caring about the happiness of other people is an aspect of morality, and some people (e.g., psychopaths) don’t care about that. And so on. But the things that they care about instead are also parts of morality, on this account.
But, OK, perhaps there’s some kind of moral hierarchy on this account. Perhaps it’s not possible to “be moral” on this account without, for example, caring about the happiness of other people… perhaps that’s necessary, though not sufficient.
In which case “I happen to care about being moral” means that I happen to care about a critical subset of the important things, as opposed to not caring about those things.
OK, fair enough. I can accept that.