Why distinguish between moral and non-moral preferences? Why are moral preferences more mutable than non-moral ones?
The basic drive to adopt some sort of ethical system is essentially the same as other preferences, and is non-mutable. It’s a preference to believe that you are making the world a better place, rather than a worse place. This introduces a definitional question of what constitutes a good world and what constitutes a bad world, which is something I think people can change their minds about.
Having written that, one question that occurs to me now is, is the basic preference to believe that you’re making the world a better place, or is it to simply believe you’re a good person? I prefer people who make the world a better place, so the two produce the same outcomes for me. But other people might not. If you instead had a preference for people who followed good principles or exhibited certain virtues, you wouldn’t feel it necessary to make the world a better place. I shouldn’t assume that such people don’t exist.
So maybe instead of talking adopting a definition of which universes are good and bad, I should talk about adopting a definition of good and bad people. If you define a good person by the consequences of their actions, then you’d go on to define which universes are good and bad. But otherwise you might instead define which principles are good, or which virtues.
Why distinguish between moral and non-moral preferences? Why are moral preferences more mutable than non-moral ones?
Also, a lot of this applies to your specific situation, so it is more morality than metaethics.
The basic drive to adopt some sort of ethical system is essentially the same as other preferences, and is non-mutable. It’s a preference to believe that you are making the world a better place, rather than a worse place. This introduces a definitional question of what constitutes a good world and what constitutes a bad world, which is something I think people can change their minds about.
Having written that, one question that occurs to me now is, is the basic preference to believe that you’re making the world a better place, or is it to simply believe you’re a good person? I prefer people who make the world a better place, so the two produce the same outcomes for me. But other people might not. If you instead had a preference for people who followed good principles or exhibited certain virtues, you wouldn’t feel it necessary to make the world a better place. I shouldn’t assume that such people don’t exist.
So maybe instead of talking adopting a definition of which universes are good and bad, I should talk about adopting a definition of good and bad people. If you define a good person by the consequences of their actions, then you’d go on to define which universes are good and bad. But otherwise you might instead define which principles are good, or which virtues.