I don’t see why. For clarity, since we probably agree it’s wrong, imagine you’re making the same argument for cannibalism instead. One person says, “I’m fine with eating and farming humans but if I get to know one first, doing it would make me feel bad.” Another says, “Screw that, I’ll eat anyone, even if I know them and their children!”
The second person is more morally consistent and also more callous. Even if there’s no difference in the way they live their lives, trying to end the holocaust of humans for food would be easier in a world full of the first type than the second.
Just as I would prefer the opposite of rule of law when the law is uniformly terrible, I prefer the opposite of moral consistency when a morality is terrible.
I don’t see why. For clarity, since we probably agree it’s wrong, imagine you’re making the same argument for cannibalism instead. One person says, “I’m fine with eating and farming humans but if I get to know one first, doing it would make me feel bad.” Another says, “Screw that, I’ll eat anyone, even if I know them and their children!”
The second person is more morally consistent and also more callous.
The consistency difference seems minimal. The most obvious moral rule in play is “Don’t do harmful things to those people who are socially near” combined with a moral indifference to cannibalistic farming but acknowledgement that it is undesirable to be so farmed and eaten. This isn’t a complex or unusual morality system (where arbitrary complexity seems to be what we mean when we say ‘inconsistent’).
I don’t see why. For clarity, since we probably agree it’s wrong, imagine you’re making the same argument for cannibalism instead. One person says, “I’m fine with eating and farming humans but if I get to know one first, doing it would make me feel bad.” Another says, “Screw that, I’ll eat anyone, even if I know them and their children!”
The second person is more morally consistent and also more callous. Even if there’s no difference in the way they live their lives, trying to end the holocaust of humans for food would be easier in a world full of the first type than the second.
Just as I would prefer the opposite of rule of law when the law is uniformly terrible, I prefer the opposite of moral consistency when a morality is terrible.
The consistency difference seems minimal. The most obvious moral rule in play is “Don’t do harmful things to those people who are socially near” combined with a moral indifference to cannibalistic farming but acknowledgement that it is undesirable to be so farmed and eaten. This isn’t a complex or unusual morality system (where arbitrary complexity seems to be what we mean when we say ‘inconsistent’).