When I have serious conversations with thoughtful religious people who have faith but no major theological training, I find it helpful to think of their statements about “God” as being statements about “all worldly optimization processes stronger than me that I don’t have time to understand in very much detail like evolution, entropy, economics, democratic politics, organizational dynamics, similar regularities in the structure of the world that science hasn’t started analyzing yet, plus many small activist groups throughout history, and a huge number of specific powerful agents silently influencing my life right now like various investors and celebrities, the local chief of police, the local school principal, my employer, my ancestors, and so on”.
I can imagine a relatively simple life heuristic, H, that might successfully navigate this vast and bewildering array of optimization pressures in their life and can ask “Does God want you to H”. Also, this translation scheme helps me to listen to evangelical radio and learn things from it :-)
I bring this up because it feels to me like you’re doing a lot of work to resuscitate ideas from moral philosophy that are significantly helped by “pluralistic reduction” to unpack the ideas into more specific and coherent claims, but you seem to be doing it in a lop-sided way by not unpacking the ideas of “the other side” in a similarly generous manner. Also, to a lesser extent, it seems to be leaving some of “our” ideas unpacked that could probably use some pluralistic reduction but might not look as shiny if unpacked this way.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that “acoustic messenger ferries” in the “ether” seem to me like perfectly adequate placeholder terms if I’m in a conversation with someone whose starting vocabulary uses them as atomic concepts, but if I’m tossing those terms out then “an ideally instrumentally rational and fully informed agent” seems roughly as questionable given how much difficulty people seem to have when using mind-shaped conceptually-atomic entities in their theories.
Do you think my impression of lopsided conceptual unpacking is accurate? If yes, I’m wondering if you could try to introspect on your writing process and try to articulate how you decided which things to unpack and which to leave fuzzy.
I’m not sure what you mean. I unpacked certain concepts as examples, and there are many more we could unpack. Could you say a bit more about what your concern is?
When I have serious conversations with thoughtful religious people who have faith but no major theological training, I find it helpful to think of their statements about “God” as being statements about “all worldly optimization processes stronger than me that I don’t have time to understand in very much detail like evolution, entropy, economics, democratic politics, organizational dynamics, similar regularities in the structure of the world that science hasn’t started analyzing yet, plus many small activist groups throughout history, and a huge number of specific powerful agents silently influencing my life right now like various investors and celebrities, the local chief of police, the local school principal, my employer, my ancestors, and so on”.
I can imagine a relatively simple life heuristic, H, that might successfully navigate this vast and bewildering array of optimization pressures in their life and can ask “Does God want you to H”. Also, this translation scheme helps me to listen to evangelical radio and learn things from it :-)
I bring this up because it feels to me like you’re doing a lot of work to resuscitate ideas from moral philosophy that are significantly helped by “pluralistic reduction” to unpack the ideas into more specific and coherent claims, but you seem to be doing it in a lop-sided way by not unpacking the ideas of “the other side” in a similarly generous manner. Also, to a lesser extent, it seems to be leaving some of “our” ideas unpacked that could probably use some pluralistic reduction but might not look as shiny if unpacked this way.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that “acoustic messenger ferries” in the “ether” seem to me like perfectly adequate placeholder terms if I’m in a conversation with someone whose starting vocabulary uses them as atomic concepts, but if I’m tossing those terms out then “an ideally instrumentally rational and fully informed agent” seems roughly as questionable given how much difficulty people seem to have when using mind-shaped conceptually-atomic entities in their theories.
Do you think my impression of lopsided conceptual unpacking is accurate? If yes, I’m wondering if you could try to introspect on your writing process and try to articulate how you decided which things to unpack and which to leave fuzzy.
I’m not sure what you mean. I unpacked certain concepts as examples, and there are many more we could unpack. Could you say a bit more about what your concern is?