Would it be morally acceptable for an immeasurably large population of individuals to allow a single individual to be mercilessly tortured if it would spare the entire population some trivial inconvenience?
I think that example triggers our “not, it would be immoral” intuition, because an immoral population would make the choice against the trivial inconvenience with even greater ease. So, their saying “yes, do please allow some individual to be mercilessly tortured” functions as Bayesian evidence in support of their immorality.
But if you had a large population of people decide between a trivial inconvenience for a different large population of people vs a single individual selected from their own midst to be mercilessly tortured, I’m guessing that the moral intuition would be the exact different, and it would feel immoral for this population to condemn a different large population to such an inconvenience just to benefit one of their own.
So you’re saying it is potentially immoral if the group themselves decide to make the decision, but potentially moral if an outsider of the group makes the exact same decision?
No, I’m not saying that. Don’t start with the ill-defined concept of “moral” and “immoral”—start from the undisputed reality of the matter that people pass moral judgements on actions they hear about.
So I’m saying that when Alice hears of X: group A choosing to sacrifice one of their own rather than inconvenience group B Alice is likely to pass a different moral judgement of that choice than if Alice hears of Y: group A choosing to sacrifice a member of group B rather than inconvenience themselves.
Even though utilitarianism would argue that actions X and Y are equally moral taken by themselves, actions X and Y provide different evidence about whether group A is really acting on moral principles. So if the evolutionary purpose for our moral intuitions is to e.g. identify people as villains or not, action Y triggers our moral intuitions negatively and action X triggers our moral intuitions positively. Because at a deeper level the real purpose of judging the deed is to judge the doer.
To flip the question on its head:
Would it be morally acceptable for an immeasurably large population of individuals to allow a single individual to be mercilessly tortured if it would spare the entire population some trivial inconvenience?
I think that example triggers our “not, it would be immoral” intuition, because an immoral population would make the choice against the trivial inconvenience with even greater ease. So, their saying “yes, do please allow some individual to be mercilessly tortured” functions as Bayesian evidence in support of their immorality.
But if you had a large population of people decide between a trivial inconvenience for a different large population of people vs a single individual selected from their own midst to be mercilessly tortured, I’m guessing that the moral intuition would be the exact different, and it would feel immoral for this population to condemn a different large population to such an inconvenience just to benefit one of their own.
So you’re saying it is potentially immoral if the group themselves decide to make the decision, but potentially moral if an outsider of the group makes the exact same decision?
No, I’m not saying that. Don’t start with the ill-defined concept of “moral” and “immoral”—start from the undisputed reality of the matter that people pass moral judgements on actions they hear about.
So I’m saying that when Alice hears of
X: group A choosing to sacrifice one of their own rather than inconvenience group B
Alice is likely to pass a different moral judgement of that choice than if Alice hears of
Y: group A choosing to sacrifice a member of group B rather than inconvenience themselves.
Even though utilitarianism would argue that actions X and Y are equally moral taken by themselves, actions X and Y provide different evidence about whether group A is really acting on moral principles. So if the evolutionary purpose for our moral intuitions is to e.g. identify people as villains or not, action Y triggers our moral intuitions negatively and action X triggers our moral intuitions positively. Because at a deeper level the real purpose of judging the deed is to judge the doer.