FAE is a complicated issue. It is an error of prediction sure, but not an error of passing moral judgement. It means, if average normal people can do bad things in bad circumstances, if that is the most common case, then being an average normal person is simply not good enough, so we need a secular version of “we are all sinners”.
I should write longer about it. The crux of the issue is that we tend to think being average means you are okay. Because that is literally how our minds work, our moral instincts are based on social approval in some prehistoric tribe, so being a typical tribe member has okay written all over it. That is why we like to think people who do bad have an abnormal “essence”. But if FAE shows it is not so, that most people who look like they did something horrible were driven there under the pressure of uniquely bad circumstances, we have only two choices. We must admit average means bad. Either forgive everybody or damn everybody. Guess what, the second is safer. We have historical experience with a we are all sinners view. It kinda functioned. We don’t have much with a set all the innocent souls in the prisons free type of stuff.
Or we silently forget FAE and go on with ancient common of ritually excommunicating / scapegoating (Rene Girard) people who did bad under the pressure of bad circumstances and pretend they are made of a rotten essence, so that we can salvage our illusion that most people are good and thus would not do bad in bad circumstances. Perhaps this noble lie works best. As this has also a lot of historical testing behind it.
To keep to the dog-kicking example, there are 3 kinds of people:
People who’d never kick a dog in any circumstances.
People who’d normally never kick a dog, but might do it if the dog keeps running in front of their feet when they urgently need to catch a train to get to a job interview that might save them from having to live under a bridge.
People who love kicking dogs and do it anytime they think they can get away with it. Maybe you think that the 2s aren’t good enough, but surely they’re a whole lot better than the 3s (IMO they’re quite close to 1s, much closer than to the 3s). The FAE is what happens when you see a 2 kicking a dog for the first and only time in his life, and you decide he’s a 3.
It is a bit of a deeper issue. Let’s take something truly unacceptable, like rampaging murder. Doesn’t FAE say a normal person can be provoked into it? If yes, the normal person is not good enough.
All the FAE says is that people tend to attribute things to other people’s innate characteristics, when in fact their circumstances may be much more important, but in their own case they explain any bad acts by pointing at the circumstances. It doesn’t say that people don’t have any innate tendencies at all.
FAE is a complicated issue. It is an error of prediction sure, but not an error of passing moral judgement. It means, if average normal people can do bad things in bad circumstances, if that is the most common case, then being an average normal person is simply not good enough, so we need a secular version of “we are all sinners”.
I should write longer about it. The crux of the issue is that we tend to think being average means you are okay. Because that is literally how our minds work, our moral instincts are based on social approval in some prehistoric tribe, so being a typical tribe member has okay written all over it. That is why we like to think people who do bad have an abnormal “essence”. But if FAE shows it is not so, that most people who look like they did something horrible were driven there under the pressure of uniquely bad circumstances, we have only two choices. We must admit average means bad. Either forgive everybody or damn everybody. Guess what, the second is safer. We have historical experience with a we are all sinners view. It kinda functioned. We don’t have much with a set all the innocent souls in the prisons free type of stuff.
Or we silently forget FAE and go on with ancient common of ritually excommunicating / scapegoating (Rene Girard) people who did bad under the pressure of bad circumstances and pretend they are made of a rotten essence, so that we can salvage our illusion that most people are good and thus would not do bad in bad circumstances. Perhaps this noble lie works best. As this has also a lot of historical testing behind it.
To keep to the dog-kicking example, there are 3 kinds of people:
People who’d never kick a dog in any circumstances.
People who’d normally never kick a dog, but might do it if the dog keeps running in front of their feet when they urgently need to catch a train to get to a job interview that might save them from having to live under a bridge.
People who love kicking dogs and do it anytime they think they can get away with it.
Maybe you think that the 2s aren’t good enough, but surely they’re a whole lot better than the 3s (IMO they’re quite close to 1s, much closer than to the 3s). The FAE is what happens when you see a 2 kicking a dog for the first and only time in his life, and you decide he’s a 3.
It is a bit of a deeper issue. Let’s take something truly unacceptable, like rampaging murder. Doesn’t FAE say a normal person can be provoked into it? If yes, the normal person is not good enough.
All the FAE says is that people tend to attribute things to other people’s innate characteristics, when in fact their circumstances may be much more important, but in their own case they explain any bad acts by pointing at the circumstances. It doesn’t say that people don’t have any innate tendencies at all.
In fact, it’s just as valid to say that the FAE is about our refusal to admit some of our innate tendencies are bad.