Ok, so I punish so as to achieve my preference that old ladies not be stolen from. Yet I do not punish to achieve my preferences in other matters.
I’ll bet you do punish people if those matters make you (and enough others) as angry as old ladies being stolen from does.
For that matter, I do not punish to transfer funds from healthy young males to impoverished old ladies who have not been stolen from, though the consequentialist results seem so parallel.
Anyone who votes for welfare does this. (Not saying this is right or wrong, just a fact.)
So, if you can explain why I feel the urge to punish in one case but not the others, you are on your way to “solving metaethics’.
If something makes you angry, and it is socially acceptable to punish it, you may well decide to punish it. I don’t see anything to solve.
If something makes you angry, and it is socially acceptable to punish it, you may well decide to punish it. I don’t see anything to solve.
Hmmm. Perhaps you don’t see the problem because you think like a scientist. Come up with a causal explanation of why people sometimes punish, and you are done.
I on the other hand, am thinking like an engineer. Simply understanding the universe is pointless. I want to use my understanding to change the universe so that it is more to my taste. Therefore, I want to know when I should punish.
We probably both agree that evolution “invented” anger precisely because organisms that punish at the right times are more successful than organisms that punish at the wrong times or perhaps never punish at all. So anger causes punishment. A scientist is satisfied. But there is more to it than that.
Why did natural selection ‘choose’ to make me angry at some things and not make me angry at other things? Can I decide for myself whether to punish, ignoring the cue of my anger? Will I be more successful if I use my reason to make those decisions rather than using my emotions? And does any of this have anything to do with this mysterious thing ‘morality’ that people keep talking about?
I can understand people not being curious about such questions. But I have trouble understanding why people at a rationality blog site are not only incurious, but so often inclined to brag about their lack of interest!
The thought of mentioning other reasons why to punish (such as to make people behave more to your liking) did cross my mind, but I thought it was obvious enough. In fact, there are still other reasons to punish. Someone might reply to your post, “You are thinking like an engineer. I am thinking like a social animal. I want to know when I should punish: I want to use my understanding of social dynamics to make people respect me more. I want to know what it signals about me when I punish someone.”
As I said here, there are a lot of different reasons to use moral language (most of them sort of dark-arts-ish, which is why I guess that post was downvoted), and likewise there are a lot of different reasons to punish.
I’ll bet you do punish people if those matters make you (and enough others) as angry as old ladies being stolen from does.
Anyone who votes for welfare does this. (Not saying this is right or wrong, just a fact.)
If something makes you angry, and it is socially acceptable to punish it, you may well decide to punish it. I don’t see anything to solve.
Hmmm. Perhaps you don’t see the problem because you think like a scientist. Come up with a causal explanation of why people sometimes punish, and you are done.
I on the other hand, am thinking like an engineer. Simply understanding the universe is pointless. I want to use my understanding to change the universe so that it is more to my taste. Therefore, I want to know when I should punish.
We probably both agree that evolution “invented” anger precisely because organisms that punish at the right times are more successful than organisms that punish at the wrong times or perhaps never punish at all. So anger causes punishment. A scientist is satisfied. But there is more to it than that.
Why did natural selection ‘choose’ to make me angry at some things and not make me angry at other things? Can I decide for myself whether to punish, ignoring the cue of my anger? Will I be more successful if I use my reason to make those decisions rather than using my emotions? And does any of this have anything to do with this mysterious thing ‘morality’ that people keep talking about?
I can understand people not being curious about such questions. But I have trouble understanding why people at a rationality blog site are not only incurious, but so often inclined to brag about their lack of interest!
The thought of mentioning other reasons why to punish (such as to make people behave more to your liking) did cross my mind, but I thought it was obvious enough. In fact, there are still other reasons to punish. Someone might reply to your post, “You are thinking like an engineer. I am thinking like a social animal. I want to know when I should punish: I want to use my understanding of social dynamics to make people respect me more. I want to know what it signals about me when I punish someone.”
As I said here, there are a lot of different reasons to use moral language (most of them sort of dark-arts-ish, which is why I guess that post was downvoted), and likewise there are a lot of different reasons to punish.