No, it is motivated a desire to create a moral theory that accurately maps what I morally value, and I consider the types of relationships we commonly refer to as “personal identity” to be more morally valuable than pretty much anything. Would you rather I devise a moral theory based on stuff I didn’t consider morally valuable?
Of course you should devise a moral theory based on what you consider morally valuable; it just fails to be persuasive to me, since it appeals to moral intuitions that I do not share (and which thus strike me as arbitrary).
Continued debate in this thread doesn’t seem very productive to me, since all of our disagreement seems to come down to differing sets of moral intuitions / terminal values. So there’s not very much to be said beyond “I think that X is valuable” and “I disagree”.
Continued debate in this thread doesn’t seem very productive to me, since all of our disagreement seems to come down to differing sets of moral intuitions / terminal values.
You’re probably right.
EDIT: However, I do think you should consider if your moral intuitions really are different, or if you’ve somehow shut some important intuitions off by use of the “make anything arbitrary” rhetorical strategy I described earlier.
Also, I should clarify that while I disapprove of the normative conclusions you’ve drawn from personal identity skepticism, I don’t see any inherent problem with using it to improve your mental health in the way you described (when you said that it decreased your anxiety about death). If your emotional systems are out of control and torturing you with excessive anxiety I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t try a mental trick like that to treat it.
Of course you should devise a moral theory based on what you consider morally valuable; it just fails to be persuasive to me, since it appeals to moral intuitions that I do not share (and which thus strike me as arbitrary).
Continued debate in this thread doesn’t seem very productive to me, since all of our disagreement seems to come down to differing sets of moral intuitions / terminal values. So there’s not very much to be said beyond “I think that X is valuable” and “I disagree”.
You’re probably right.
EDIT: However, I do think you should consider if your moral intuitions really are different, or if you’ve somehow shut some important intuitions off by use of the “make anything arbitrary” rhetorical strategy I described earlier.
Also, I should clarify that while I disapprove of the normative conclusions you’ve drawn from personal identity skepticism, I don’t see any inherent problem with using it to improve your mental health in the way you described (when you said that it decreased your anxiety about death). If your emotional systems are out of control and torturing you with excessive anxiety I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t try a mental trick like that to treat it.