I can easily imagine a world in which I prefer being crushed to death than receiving the attentions of some attractive women, so long as you let me add a little context. [..] So while I agree that the choice you describe is a clear preference of mine, it has none of the strength of my moral belief about slavery.
I understand this to imply that you cannot imagine a world in which you prefer to send someone into slavery than not do so, no matter what the context. Have I understood that correctly?
No, I can easily imagine a world in which I prefer to send someone into slavery than drink a drop of lemon juice: all I have to do is imagine that I’m a bad person. My point was that it’s easy to imagine any world in which my preferences are different, but I cannot imagine a world in which slavery is morally permissible (at least not without radically changing what slavery means).
How about a world in which by sending one person from your planet into slavery you defer the enslavement of the entire earth for 140 years? A world in which alien invaders which outgun us more than Europeans outgunned the tribes in Africa from which many of them took slaves, but who are willing for some reason we can’t comprehend to take one person you pick back to the home planet, 70 light years away. But failing your making that choice, they will stay here and at some expense to themselves enslave our entire race and planet?
Can you now imagine a world in which your sending someone in to slavery is not immoral? If so, how does this change in what you can and cannot imagine change your opinion of either the imagination standard or slavery’s moral status?
It seems to me most likely source of emotions, feelings, is evolution. We aren’t just evolved to run from a sabre tooth tiger, we have a rush of overwhelming fear as the instrumentality of our fleeing effectively. SImilarly, we have evolved, mammals as a whole, not just humans not even just primates, to be “social” animals meaning a tremendously important part of the environment was our group of other mammals. Long before we made the argument that slavery was wrong, we had strong feelings of wanting to resist the things that went along with being enslaved, while apparently we also had power feelings that assisted us in forcing others to do what we wanted.
Given the way emotions probably evolved, I think it does make sense to look to our emotions to guide us in knowing what strategies probably work better than others in interacting with our environment, but it doesn’t make sense to expect them to guide us correctly in corner cases, in rare situations in which there would have not been enough pay-off to have evolution do any fine tuning of emotional responses.
Can you imagine a world in which killing people is morally permissible?
Sure, I live in one. I chose slavery because it’s a pretty unequivocal case of moral badness, while killing is not such as in war, self-defense, execution, etc. I think probably rape, and certainly lying are things which are always morally wrong (I don’t think this entails that one should never do them, however).
My thought is just that at least at the core of them, moral beliefs aren’t subject to having been otherwise. I guess this is true of beliefs about logic too, though maybe not for the same reasons. And this doesn’t make either kind of belief immune to error, of course.
I understand this to imply that you cannot imagine a world in which you prefer to send someone into slavery than not do so, no matter what the context. Have I understood that correctly?
No, I can easily imagine a world in which I prefer to send someone into slavery than drink a drop of lemon juice: all I have to do is imagine that I’m a bad person. My point was that it’s easy to imagine any world in which my preferences are different, but I cannot imagine a world in which slavery is morally permissible (at least not without radically changing what slavery means).
How about a world in which by sending one person from your planet into slavery you defer the enslavement of the entire earth for 140 years? A world in which alien invaders which outgun us more than Europeans outgunned the tribes in Africa from which many of them took slaves, but who are willing for some reason we can’t comprehend to take one person you pick back to the home planet, 70 light years away. But failing your making that choice, they will stay here and at some expense to themselves enslave our entire race and planet?
Can you now imagine a world in which your sending someone in to slavery is not immoral? If so, how does this change in what you can and cannot imagine change your opinion of either the imagination standard or slavery’s moral status?
It seems to me most likely source of emotions, feelings, is evolution. We aren’t just evolved to run from a sabre tooth tiger, we have a rush of overwhelming fear as the instrumentality of our fleeing effectively. SImilarly, we have evolved, mammals as a whole, not just humans not even just primates, to be “social” animals meaning a tremendously important part of the environment was our group of other mammals. Long before we made the argument that slavery was wrong, we had strong feelings of wanting to resist the things that went along with being enslaved, while apparently we also had power feelings that assisted us in forcing others to do what we wanted.
Given the way emotions probably evolved, I think it does make sense to look to our emotions to guide us in knowing what strategies probably work better than others in interacting with our environment, but it doesn’t make sense to expect them to guide us correctly in corner cases, in rare situations in which there would have not been enough pay-off to have evolution do any fine tuning of emotional responses.
Ah, OK. Thanks for the clarification.
Can you imagine a world in which killing people is morally permissible?
Sure, I live in one. I chose slavery because it’s a pretty unequivocal case of moral badness, while killing is not such as in war, self-defense, execution, etc. I think probably rape, and certainly lying are things which are always morally wrong (I don’t think this entails that one should never do them, however).
My thought is just that at least at the core of them, moral beliefs aren’t subject to having been otherwise. I guess this is true of beliefs about logic too, though maybe not for the same reasons. And this doesn’t make either kind of belief immune to error, of course.
OK. Thanks for clarifying.