Unless “theory which would maximize human fun” or “theory that would be well-received among people popularly understood to be virtuous” are desiderata of mine, why the in the world should I use them? It would be circular to use them to craft my ethical theory because my ethical theory says to, incomprehensible to use them because somebody else’s says to, and unmotivated to use them for any other reason.
Yes, obviously. The question was in the first paragraph, not the second, which you seem to have gotten hung up on. The question, again, was: what’s the justification for taking your intuitive desiderata as the most (sole?) important factor in deciding on an ethical theory?
I gave examples of some strategies for choosing an ethical theory that some other people might choose only to show that it’s not obviously clear that your strategy is the sole or best strategy. So the question, again, is why do you think that particular strategy is the best one (assuming you considered others and you do believe that’s best)?
I’m not clear on what you’re suggesting. Are you asking why I used my intuitive desiderata, as opposed to someone else’s desiderata, or desiderata I picked out of a hat, or evitanda just to be contrary, or not seeking an ethical theory at all, or...? What’s the salient alternative here that I’m meant to justify dismissing?
I’m asking why you decided that “choose the theory that best satisfies my intuitive desiderata” was the best method of choosing a theory. What justifies that method of “choosing a theory”, if there is a justification and you did in fact think about it beforehand? If you did think about it, presumably you decided that was the best method of choosing a theory for some reason(s), and I’m asking what those reasons might be.
One alternative, for example, might be for me to critically analyze my intuitions beforehand and be skeptical that all my intuitions are good for me (in the sense that acting on those intuitions best furthers all my interests weighted accordingly), and I might then choose to disgard some of my intuitive desiderata or weight them in some way before proceeding with whatever else I’ve decided on as a method of choosing. I might decide to just accept the theory that is most respected by my parents, or my priest, or the ethics professors that I most admire. I might decide to accept a theory on the basis of anticipating the results that believing in the theory will have on me and choosing the theory with the best anticipated effect. I haven’t given the justifications here, because these are just examples, but if I were to follow one of those strategies, I would almost certainly have reasons for thinking that strategy was better than others I considered. Those reasons are what I was asking you about. Just to head off another potential misunderstanding, I’m not suggesting that you should have considered any of these or that any of these are better strategies. They’re just given as evidence of the fact that your strategy is not the only one.
I’m very curious what was so vague or poorly expressed or confusing in my original post if you (or anybody else) can identify something in particular.
Are you looking for a causal history or a theoretical justification...? Meh, I’ll just summarize both together.
Trying to unite my desiderata into a single theory that doesn’t eat itself proved a good means of reconciling or prioritizing my intuitions where they conflicted. (For instance, I had warring intuitions over whether to privilege the null action or commit myself to moral luck, and chose the former because my intuition against moral luck was stronger than my wariness of the doing-allowing distinction.) I find having reconciled/prioritized desiderata more comfortable and actionable, and codifying them into a decision procedure makes them easier to act on consistently.
I found all the theories I’d run across in academic puttering around to be deeply unsatisfactory in one or more ways; no authority figures I respected enough to consider emulating put forth coherent theories of their own. (One of my undergrad professors, I admired enough that I might have considered doing this, explicitly or just implicitly by letting him argue it to me in real time before I was equipped to argue back very well, but he didn’t talk about his personal views during ethics class and didn’t specialize in the field so I never found a paper on it by him or anything.) That meant I had to either not have one (which would lead to awkward silences when people in grad school asked me for my ethical opinions, and an uncomfortable lack of opinion when writing ethics papers, and no decision procedure to follow when I was uncertain of some real-life choice’s moral status), or make up my own. To make one up with “the best anticipated effect” would presuppose consequentialism, which I rejected pretty much as soon as I heard it. I wanted the ethical theory that would lead to me giving the right answers according to me, in a principled way, to ethical dilemmas where I already had a right answer in mind (e.g. let’s not murder homeless people for their organs thankyouverymuch), and let me pick my way through murkier cases in a way that felt right.
Thanks for the explanation. I was looking more for theoretical justification (if theoretical justification played a part for you in deciding how to choose an ethical theory). What I had in mind was, if you were going to try to convince other people that they should choose an ethical theory for the same reasons that you chose yours and should adopt the same theory you did, what would be the arguments that you would use to persuade them (limited to good-faith arguments that you actually believe rather than rhetorical strategies aimed primarily at convincing)? And there’s a little of that in your answer here. Thanks for your time.
Unless “theory which would maximize human fun” or “theory that would be well-received among people popularly understood to be virtuous” are desiderata of mine, why the in the world should I use them? It would be circular to use them to craft my ethical theory because my ethical theory says to, incomprehensible to use them because somebody else’s says to, and unmotivated to use them for any other reason.
Yes, obviously. The question was in the first paragraph, not the second, which you seem to have gotten hung up on. The question, again, was: what’s the justification for taking your intuitive desiderata as the most (sole?) important factor in deciding on an ethical theory?
I gave examples of some strategies for choosing an ethical theory that some other people might choose only to show that it’s not obviously clear that your strategy is the sole or best strategy. So the question, again, is why do you think that particular strategy is the best one (assuming you considered others and you do believe that’s best)?
I’m not clear on what you’re suggesting. Are you asking why I used my intuitive desiderata, as opposed to someone else’s desiderata, or desiderata I picked out of a hat, or evitanda just to be contrary, or not seeking an ethical theory at all, or...? What’s the salient alternative here that I’m meant to justify dismissing?
I’m asking why you decided that “choose the theory that best satisfies my intuitive desiderata” was the best method of choosing a theory. What justifies that method of “choosing a theory”, if there is a justification and you did in fact think about it beforehand? If you did think about it, presumably you decided that was the best method of choosing a theory for some reason(s), and I’m asking what those reasons might be.
One alternative, for example, might be for me to critically analyze my intuitions beforehand and be skeptical that all my intuitions are good for me (in the sense that acting on those intuitions best furthers all my interests weighted accordingly), and I might then choose to disgard some of my intuitive desiderata or weight them in some way before proceeding with whatever else I’ve decided on as a method of choosing. I might decide to just accept the theory that is most respected by my parents, or my priest, or the ethics professors that I most admire. I might decide to accept a theory on the basis of anticipating the results that believing in the theory will have on me and choosing the theory with the best anticipated effect. I haven’t given the justifications here, because these are just examples, but if I were to follow one of those strategies, I would almost certainly have reasons for thinking that strategy was better than others I considered. Those reasons are what I was asking you about. Just to head off another potential misunderstanding, I’m not suggesting that you should have considered any of these or that any of these are better strategies. They’re just given as evidence of the fact that your strategy is not the only one.
I’m very curious what was so vague or poorly expressed or confusing in my original post if you (or anybody else) can identify something in particular.
Are you looking for a causal history or a theoretical justification...? Meh, I’ll just summarize both together.
Trying to unite my desiderata into a single theory that doesn’t eat itself proved a good means of reconciling or prioritizing my intuitions where they conflicted. (For instance, I had warring intuitions over whether to privilege the null action or commit myself to moral luck, and chose the former because my intuition against moral luck was stronger than my wariness of the doing-allowing distinction.) I find having reconciled/prioritized desiderata more comfortable and actionable, and codifying them into a decision procedure makes them easier to act on consistently.
I found all the theories I’d run across in academic puttering around to be deeply unsatisfactory in one or more ways; no authority figures I respected enough to consider emulating put forth coherent theories of their own. (One of my undergrad professors, I admired enough that I might have considered doing this, explicitly or just implicitly by letting him argue it to me in real time before I was equipped to argue back very well, but he didn’t talk about his personal views during ethics class and didn’t specialize in the field so I never found a paper on it by him or anything.) That meant I had to either not have one (which would lead to awkward silences when people in grad school asked me for my ethical opinions, and an uncomfortable lack of opinion when writing ethics papers, and no decision procedure to follow when I was uncertain of some real-life choice’s moral status), or make up my own. To make one up with “the best anticipated effect” would presuppose consequentialism, which I rejected pretty much as soon as I heard it. I wanted the ethical theory that would lead to me giving the right answers according to me, in a principled way, to ethical dilemmas where I already had a right answer in mind (e.g. let’s not murder homeless people for their organs thankyouverymuch), and let me pick my way through murkier cases in a way that felt right.
Thanks for the explanation. I was looking more for theoretical justification (if theoretical justification played a part for you in deciding how to choose an ethical theory). What I had in mind was, if you were going to try to convince other people that they should choose an ethical theory for the same reasons that you chose yours and should adopt the same theory you did, what would be the arguments that you would use to persuade them (limited to good-faith arguments that you actually believe rather than rhetorical strategies aimed primarily at convincing)? And there’s a little of that in your answer here. Thanks for your time.