I think it would be better not to use the word “wholesome”. Using it is cheating, by letting us pretend at the same time that (A) we’re explaining a new kind of ethics, which we name “wholesome”, and (B) that we already know what “wholesome” means. This is a common and severe epistemological failure mode which traces back to the writings of Plato.
If you replace every instance of “wholesome” with the word “frobby”, does the essay clearly define “frobby”?
It seems to me to be a way to try to smuggle virtue ethics into the consequentialist rationality community by disguising it with a different word. If you replace every instance of “wholesome” with the word “virtuous”, does the essay’s meaning change?
I think that for most of what I’m saying, the meaning wouldn’t change too much if you replaced the word “wholesome” with “virtuous” (though the section contrasting it with virtue ethics would become more confusing to read).
As practical guidance, however, I’m deliberately piggybacking off what people already know about the words. I think the advice to make sure that you pay attention to ways in which things feel unwholesome is importantly different from (and, I hypothesize, more useful than) advice to make sure you pay attention to ways in which things feel unvirtuous. And the advice to make sure you pay attention to things which feel frobby would obviously not be very helpful, since readers will not have much of a sense of what feels frobby.
I think it would be better not to use the word “wholesome”. Using it is cheating, by letting us pretend at the same time that (A) we’re explaining a new kind of ethics, which we name “wholesome”, and (B) that we already know what “wholesome” means. This is a common and severe epistemological failure mode which traces back to the writings of Plato.
If you replace every instance of “wholesome” with the word “frobby”, does the essay clearly define “frobby”?
It seems to me to be a way to try to smuggle virtue ethics into the consequentialist rationality community by disguising it with a different word. If you replace every instance of “wholesome” with the word “virtuous”, does the essay’s meaning change?
I think that for most of what I’m saying, the meaning wouldn’t change too much if you replaced the word “wholesome” with “virtuous” (though the section contrasting it with virtue ethics would become more confusing to read).
As practical guidance, however, I’m deliberately piggybacking off what people already know about the words. I think the advice to make sure that you pay attention to ways in which things feel unwholesome is importantly different from (and, I hypothesize, more useful than) advice to make sure you pay attention to ways in which things feel unvirtuous. And the advice to make sure you pay attention to things which feel frobby would obviously not be very helpful, since readers will not have much of a sense of what feels frobby.