I would cheerfully agree that humans aren’t rational and routinely change their minds about morality for non-rational reasons.
This is one of the things I was trying to get at. Ask when we should change our minds for non-rational reasons, and when we should attempt to change others’ minds using non-rational means.
The same examples I mentioned above work for these questions too.
Here’s what I had in mind with the reference to the Vicar of Bray. Imagine an individual with two terminal values: “Stay alive and employed” and the reigning orthodoxy at the moment. The individual sincerely believes in both, and whenever they start to conflict, changes their beliefs about the orthodoxy. He is quite sincere in advocating for the ruling ideology at each point in time; he really does believe in divine right of kings, just so long as it’s not a dangerous belief to hold.
The beliefs in question are at least potentially terminal moral beliefs. Without delving deep into the history, let’s stipulate for the purpose of the conversation that we’re talking about a rational actor who has a sequence of terminal moral beliefs about what constitutes a just government, and that these beliefs shift with the political climate.
Now for contrast, let’s consider a hypothetical rational but very selfish child. The child’s parents attempt and succeed in changing the child’s values to be less selfish. They do this by the usual parental tactics of punishment and example-setting, not by rational argument. By your social standard and mine, this is an improvement to the child.
Both the vicar and the child are updating their moral beliefs in response to outside pressure, not rational deliberation. The general consensus is that parents are obligated to bring up their children not to be overly self-centered and that reasoning with children is not a sufficient pedagogic technique But conversely that coercive government pressure on religion is ignoble.
Is this simply that you and I think “a change in moral beliefs, brought about by non-reasonable means is good (all else equal), if it significantly improves the beliefs of the subject by my standards”?
I think the caveats will turn out to matter a lot. One of the things that human moral beliefs do, in practice, is give other humans some reasons to trust you. If I know that you are committed, for non-instrumental reasons, to avoid manipulating* me into changing my values, that gives me reasons to trust you. Conversely, if your moral view is that it’s legitimate to lie to people to make them do what you want, people will trust you less.
Obviously, people have incentives to lie about their true values. I think equally obviously, people are paying attention and looking hard for that sort of hypocrisy.
*This sentence is true for a range of possible expansions of “manipulating”.
My statement was more observational than ideal, though. Sure, a rational agent can be averse to manipulating other people (and humans often are too), because agents can care about whatever they want. But that doesn’t bear very strongly on how the language is used compared to the fact that in real-world usage I see people say things like “improved his morals” by only three standards: consistency, how much society approves, and how much you approve.
I would cheerfully agree that humans aren’t rational and routinely change their minds about morality for non-rational reasons.
This is one of the things I was trying to get at. Ask when we should change our minds for non-rational reasons, and when we should attempt to change others’ minds using non-rational means.
The same examples I mentioned above work for these questions too.
Here’s what I had in mind with the reference to the Vicar of Bray. Imagine an individual with two terminal values: “Stay alive and employed” and the reigning orthodoxy at the moment. The individual sincerely believes in both, and whenever they start to conflict, changes their beliefs about the orthodoxy. He is quite sincere in advocating for the ruling ideology at each point in time; he really does believe in divine right of kings, just so long as it’s not a dangerous belief to hold.
The beliefs in question are at least potentially terminal moral beliefs. Without delving deep into the history, let’s stipulate for the purpose of the conversation that we’re talking about a rational actor who has a sequence of terminal moral beliefs about what constitutes a just government, and that these beliefs shift with the political climate.
Now for contrast, let’s consider a hypothetical rational but very selfish child. The child’s parents attempt and succeed in changing the child’s values to be less selfish. They do this by the usual parental tactics of punishment and example-setting, not by rational argument. By your social standard and mine, this is an improvement to the child.
Both the vicar and the child are updating their moral beliefs in response to outside pressure, not rational deliberation. The general consensus is that parents are obligated to bring up their children not to be overly self-centered and that reasoning with children is not a sufficient pedagogic technique But conversely that coercive government pressure on religion is ignoble.
Is this simply that you and I think “a change in moral beliefs, brought about by non-reasonable means is good (all else equal), if it significantly improves the beliefs of the subject by my standards”?
I’d agree with that. Maybe with some caveats, but generally yes.
I think the caveats will turn out to matter a lot. One of the things that human moral beliefs do, in practice, is give other humans some reasons to trust you. If I know that you are committed, for non-instrumental reasons, to avoid manipulating* me into changing my values, that gives me reasons to trust you. Conversely, if your moral view is that it’s legitimate to lie to people to make them do what you want, people will trust you less.
Obviously, people have incentives to lie about their true values. I think equally obviously, people are paying attention and looking hard for that sort of hypocrisy.
*This sentence is true for a range of possible expansions of “manipulating”.
My statement was more observational than ideal, though. Sure, a rational agent can be averse to manipulating other people (and humans often are too), because agents can care about whatever they want. But that doesn’t bear very strongly on how the language is used compared to the fact that in real-world usage I see people say things like “improved his morals” by only three standards: consistency, how much society approves, and how much you approve.