A) Something that is annoying to me/that I disapprove of isn’t necessarily something I consider “moral decay”, if I actually think about it.
Something that is annoying to you isn’t necessarily immoral, no, except insofar as your annoyance is a real negative externality that should enter into consideration by the person whose behavior is under discussion (even if the effect is in the end judged to be negligible), i.e. if I find my upstairs neighbor’s all-hours drum-playing annoying, that doesn’t mean that it’s immoral except insofar as said neighbor ought (morally speaking) to take my feelings into account.
Something that you disapprove of should be something you consider immoral, or else it’s nonsensical to say that you disapprove of it. There isn’t any other sensible interpretation of disapproval, I think; some people do use the term in ways like “I disapprove of Bob the Casual Acquaintance’s gambling and skydiving”, but I don’t think that’s an appropriate use of the word. In such a case we should say “I don’t like that he does that” or “I wouldn’t do that in his place” or some such. Considered disapproval ought to be reserved for things we think are immoral.
B) Many of my attitudes are acquired from childhood and thus don’t represent society as a whole, or anything objective–so I should be suspicious of my judgements of morality anyway.
Whether your attitude represents society as a whole, whether it represents something “objective” (see Eliezer’s posts on naturalistic metaethics for why that may not be the ideal term), and whether you should accept your attitude after consideration, are three quite different issues.
As for this:
given the size and complexity of our current society and the number of other friends all these people have, I’m likely to have a negligible effect even on the person I’m judging, much less on society as a whole.
First of all, your judgments of approval and disapproval have an effect on you, and on your moral sense and moral judgments. That’s pretty important, I think. Second of all, a small effect isn’t necessarily a negligible effect (i.e. one that may in fact be safely neglected). Thirdly, you are presumably in the tight-knit circles of some other people, and if I am close friends with Alice, my approval or disapproval of Bob has an effect on Alice, regardless of whether I am close friends with Bob and can affect him or not.
Really, the core of my objection is to the notion, apparently expressed by pjeby, that we just shouldn’t approve or disapprove of people’s behaviors, or of people on the basis of their behaviors. I don’t agree. Certainly if not wanting to be “like those people” prevents me from doing something that would be good for me to do, that’s bad. That doesn’t mean I should stop not wanting to be “like those people” in the ways that make them “those people”.
Something that you disapprove of should be something you consider immoral, or else it’s nonsensical to say that you disapprove of it.
Disapproval—in the sense being discussed in this thread—is an emotional response. An alief, not a belief. The entire point of what I wrote to Swimmer963 was to encourage her to rationally evaluate whether her feelings were just an irrational “ugh” field rather than a justified moral disapproval.
By default, our brains use ugh fields for moral reasoning, and generate moral reasons after the feeling of disgust pops up. This is, as far as I know, quite settled science at this point.
Really, the core of my objection is to the notion, apparently expressed by pjeby, that we just shouldn’t approve or disapprove of people’s behaviors, or of people on the basis of their behaviors.
Actually, “shouldn’t” is too strong; I’m simply saying it’s not really that useful. If a bunch of LWers got to living together in one place, then it might be useful to go around automatically having ugh feelings about certain behaviors, because it would actually do something positive for group norms. But most of us live in situations where any impact our disapproval might have on something is likely outweighed by dozens of competing forms of disapproval going in different directions.
Do understand, though, that “disapproval” here is strictly referring to automatic feelings of revulsion. It is quite possible to decide that a behavior has negative utility or that your life would be better off without having to interact with someone enacting that behavior, without having any automatic feelings of revulsion being involved.
Something that is annoying to you isn’t necessarily immoral, no, except insofar as your annoyance is a real negative externality that should enter into consideration by the person whose behavior is under discussion (even if the effect is in the end judged to be negligible), i.e. if I find my upstairs neighbor’s all-hours drum-playing annoying, that doesn’t mean that it’s immoral except insofar as said neighbor ought (morally speaking) to take my feelings into account.
Something that you disapprove of should be something you consider immoral, or else it’s nonsensical to say that you disapprove of it. There isn’t any other sensible interpretation of disapproval, I think; some people do use the term in ways like “I disapprove of Bob the Casual Acquaintance’s gambling and skydiving”, but I don’t think that’s an appropriate use of the word. In such a case we should say “I don’t like that he does that” or “I wouldn’t do that in his place” or some such. Considered disapproval ought to be reserved for things we think are immoral.
Whether your attitude represents society as a whole, whether it represents something “objective” (see Eliezer’s posts on naturalistic metaethics for why that may not be the ideal term), and whether you should accept your attitude after consideration, are three quite different issues.
As for this:
First of all, your judgments of approval and disapproval have an effect on you, and on your moral sense and moral judgments. That’s pretty important, I think. Second of all, a small effect isn’t necessarily a negligible effect (i.e. one that may in fact be safely neglected). Thirdly, you are presumably in the tight-knit circles of some other people, and if I am close friends with Alice, my approval or disapproval of Bob has an effect on Alice, regardless of whether I am close friends with Bob and can affect him or not.
Really, the core of my objection is to the notion, apparently expressed by pjeby, that we just shouldn’t approve or disapprove of people’s behaviors, or of people on the basis of their behaviors. I don’t agree. Certainly if not wanting to be “like those people” prevents me from doing something that would be good for me to do, that’s bad. That doesn’t mean I should stop not wanting to be “like those people” in the ways that make them “those people”.
Disapproval—in the sense being discussed in this thread—is an emotional response. An alief, not a belief. The entire point of what I wrote to Swimmer963 was to encourage her to rationally evaluate whether her feelings were just an irrational “ugh” field rather than a justified moral disapproval.
By default, our brains use ugh fields for moral reasoning, and generate moral reasons after the feeling of disgust pops up. This is, as far as I know, quite settled science at this point.
Actually, “shouldn’t” is too strong; I’m simply saying it’s not really that useful. If a bunch of LWers got to living together in one place, then it might be useful to go around automatically having ugh feelings about certain behaviors, because it would actually do something positive for group norms. But most of us live in situations where any impact our disapproval might have on something is likely outweighed by dozens of competing forms of disapproval going in different directions.
Do understand, though, that “disapproval” here is strictly referring to automatic feelings of revulsion. It is quite possible to decide that a behavior has negative utility or that your life would be better off without having to interact with someone enacting that behavior, without having any automatic feelings of revulsion being involved.
Is that clearer now?