poke: I’m so tired of exaggerated cynicism. Just because almost all people’s intuitions about the age of the universe are two low doesn’t mean its age is actually infinite, nor even that this produces a more correct model or approximation than the average model. 100M years and powered by gravitational collapse gave better results than 3^^^3 years and thermal noise. Arguably even 6000 years and anthropomorphically constructed was more accurate.
“Whether one should rescue a drowning child if one is a cancer researcher is not as big a concern as who you have sex with and how you do it.”
Sure sounds to me like I’m writing to a moral realist who thinks that whether one rescues a drowning child is a bigger concern than who you have sex with.
“How much genuine moral deliberation is really going on in society? How much influence do those who engage in genuine moral deliberation (i.e., moral philosophers) have on society? I think the answers are close to “none” and “not at all.”″
I think that its obvious that the answers are “disappointingly little but some” and “disappointingly little but some” even if you remove the world “moral” from the above question each time it appears. (of course, most people seem to think real moral deliberation where one doesn’t know one’s eventual conclusion to be intrinsically immoral). It’s equally obvious both that inadequate deliberation prevents vast numbers of pareto improvements in economic efficiency from taking place AND that deliberation has allowed the production of complex useful engineered systems. Likewise, that people in modern cultures have deliberated enough to substantially increase the impact of Haidt’s harm and fairness moral dimensions on decision making relative to purity, hierarchy and loyalty, AND that they are still so afflicted by non-reflective moral intuitions that most members of advanced cultures feel little revulsion at laws that deny the poorest of the poor fair access to customers in developed markets.
poke: I’m so tired of exaggerated cynicism. Just because almost all people’s intuitions about the age of the universe are two low doesn’t mean its age is actually infinite, nor even that this produces a more correct model or approximation than the average model. 100M years and powered by gravitational collapse gave better results than 3^^^3 years and thermal noise. Arguably even 6000 years and anthropomorphically constructed was more accurate.
“Whether one should rescue a drowning child if one is a cancer researcher is not as big a concern as who you have sex with and how you do it.”
Sure sounds to me like I’m writing to a moral realist who thinks that whether one rescues a drowning child is a bigger concern than who you have sex with.
“How much genuine moral deliberation is really going on in society? How much influence do those who engage in genuine moral deliberation (i.e., moral philosophers) have on society? I think the answers are close to “none” and “not at all.”″
I think that its obvious that the answers are “disappointingly little but some” and “disappointingly little but some” even if you remove the world “moral” from the above question each time it appears. (of course, most people seem to think real moral deliberation where one doesn’t know one’s eventual conclusion to be intrinsically immoral). It’s equally obvious both that inadequate deliberation prevents vast numbers of pareto improvements in economic efficiency from taking place AND that deliberation has allowed the production of complex useful engineered systems. Likewise, that people in modern cultures have deliberated enough to substantially increase the impact of Haidt’s harm and fairness moral dimensions on decision making relative to purity, hierarchy and loyalty, AND that they are still so afflicted by non-reflective moral intuitions that most members of advanced cultures feel little revulsion at laws that deny the poorest of the poor fair access to customers in developed markets.