considering aid to Africa can be dealt with entirely within our ‘folk moral intuitions’
This is an issue that our folk moral intuitions can get horribly wrong. It’s a lot easier to think “people in Africa are suffering, so it’s morally right to help them” than to ask “is X actually going to help them?” and harder still to figure out which intervention will help the most. The difference (from a consequentialist perspective) between efficient charity and average charity is probably much larger than the difference between average charity and no charity.
This is an issue that our folk moral intuitions can get horribly wrong. It’s a lot easier to think “people in Africa are suffering, so it’s morally right to help them” than to ask “is X actually going to help them?”
This is true, but in this case what is going wrong is our intuitions about instrumental values, not moral ones. I think thomblake was talking about whether our folk moral intuitions could determine whether it was a good or bad thing if we did something that resulted in less suffering in Africa. Our intuitions about how to effectively accomplish that goal are a whole different beast.
This is an issue that our folk moral intuitions can get horribly wrong. It’s a lot easier to think “people in Africa are suffering, so it’s morally right to help them” than to ask “is X actually going to help them?” and harder still to figure out which intervention will help the most. The difference (from a consequentialist perspective) between efficient charity and average charity is probably much larger than the difference between average charity and no charity.
This is true, but in this case what is going wrong is our intuitions about instrumental values, not moral ones. I think thomblake was talking about whether our folk moral intuitions could determine whether it was a good or bad thing if we did something that resulted in less suffering in Africa. Our intuitions about how to effectively accomplish that goal are a whole different beast.
Yes exactly