I agree with your conclusion, but feel like there’s some nuance lacking. In three ways.
1.
It seems that indeed a lot of our moral reasoning is confused because we fall for some kind of moral essentialism, some idea that there is an objective morality that is more than just a cultural contract that was invented and refined by humans over the course of time.
But then you reinstall this essentialism into our “preferences”, which you hold to be grounded in your feelings:
Human flourishing is good because the idea of human flourishing makes me smile. Kicking puppies is bad because it upsets me.
We recursively justify our values, and this recursion doesn’t end at the boundary between consciousness and subconsciousness. Your feelings might appear to be your basic units of value, but they’re not. This is obvious if you consider that our observation about the world often change our feelings.
Where does this chain of justifications end? I don’t know, but I’m reasonably sure about two things:
1) The bedrock of our values are probably the same for any human being, and any difference between conscious values is either due to having seen different data, but more likely due to different people situationally benefitting more under different moralities. For example a strong person will have “values” that are more accepting of competition, but that will change once they become weaker.
2) While a confused ethicist is wrong to be looking for a “true” (normative) morality, this is still better than not searching at all because you hold your conscious values to be basic. The best of both worlds is an ethicist that doesn’t believe in normative morality, but still knows there is something to be learned about the source of our values.
2.
Considering our evolutionary origins, it seems very unlikely to me that we are completely selfish. It seems a lot more likely to me that the source of our values is some proxy of the survival and spread of our genes.
You’re not the only one who carries your genes, and so your “selfish” preferences might not be completely selfish after all
3.
We’re a mashup of various subagents that want different things. I’d be surprised if they all had the same moral systems. Part of you might be reflective, aware of the valence of your experience, and actively (and selfishly) trying to increase it. Part of you will reflect your preferences for things that are very not-selfish. Other parts of you will just be naive deontologists.
1) The bedrock of our values are probably the same for any human being, and any difference between conscious values is either due to having seen different data, but more likely due to different people situationally benefitting more under different moralities. For example a strong person will have “values” that are more accepting of competition, but that will change once they become weaker.
I continue to find minimization of confusion while maintaining homeostasis around biologically determined set points a reasonable explanation for the bedrock of our values. Hopefully these ideas will coalesce well enough in me soon to be able to write something more about this than that headline.
I do not fully understand the point you are making in (1). I don’t see anything specifically to disagree with, but also don’t see how it’s in conflict with anything in the OP. I hold that my feelings are my basic unit of value because that’s what I care about. If a different person cares about different things, that’s their decision. My feelings are in constant flux, and will often change. Is that somehow in conflict with something I’ve said? My thoughts on egoism are more fully fleshed out in the linked post.
I’m mostly ignoring (2) because it will get me off on a tangent about evopsych, and that’s not the discussion I want to get into at the moment. Suffice it to say that I think when I admit that the idea of human flourishing makes me smile, I am admitting to not being completely selfish.
On (3), I again don’t have much disagreement. I’m not advocating for selfishness in the sense of not caring about anyone else. I’m just asking us to recognize that our preferences are subjective and not binding on anyone else. Those preferences are obviously complicated and sometimes self-contradictory. Egoism is not Objectivism.
Still I think this line of thinking is extremely important because it means that people won’t agree with any proposal for a morality that isn’t useful for them, and keeping this in mind makes it a lot easier to propose moralities that will actually be adopted.
I agree with your conclusion, but feel like there’s some nuance lacking. In three ways.
1.
It seems that indeed a lot of our moral reasoning is confused because we fall for some kind of moral essentialism, some idea that there is an objective morality that is more than just a cultural contract that was invented and refined by humans over the course of time.
But then you reinstall this essentialism into our “preferences”, which you hold to be grounded in your feelings:
We recursively justify our values, and this recursion doesn’t end at the boundary between consciousness and subconsciousness. Your feelings might appear to be your basic units of value, but they’re not. This is obvious if you consider that our observation about the world often change our feelings.
Where does this chain of justifications end? I don’t know, but I’m reasonably sure about two things:
1) The bedrock of our values are probably the same for any human being, and any difference between conscious values is either due to having seen different data, but more likely due to different people situationally benefitting more under different moralities. For example a strong person will have “values” that are more accepting of competition, but that will change once they become weaker.
2) While a confused ethicist is wrong to be looking for a “true” (normative) morality, this is still better than not searching at all because you hold your conscious values to be basic. The best of both worlds is an ethicist that doesn’t believe in normative morality, but still knows there is something to be learned about the source of our values.
2.
Considering our evolutionary origins, it seems very unlikely to me that we are completely selfish. It seems a lot more likely to me that the source of our values is some proxy of the survival and spread of our genes.
You’re not the only one who carries your genes, and so your “selfish” preferences might not be completely selfish after all
3.
We’re a mashup of various subagents that want different things. I’d be surprised if they all had the same moral systems. Part of you might be reflective, aware of the valence of your experience, and actively (and selfishly) trying to increase it. Part of you will reflect your preferences for things that are very not-selfish. Other parts of you will just be naive deontologists.
I continue to find minimization of confusion while maintaining homeostasis around biologically determined set points a reasonable explanation for the bedrock of our values. Hopefully these ideas will coalesce well enough in me soon to be able to write something more about this than that headline.
I do not fully understand the point you are making in (1). I don’t see anything specifically to disagree with, but also don’t see how it’s in conflict with anything in the OP. I hold that my feelings are my basic unit of value because that’s what I care about. If a different person cares about different things, that’s their decision. My feelings are in constant flux, and will often change. Is that somehow in conflict with something I’ve said? My thoughts on egoism are more fully fleshed out in the linked post.
I’m mostly ignoring (2) because it will get me off on a tangent about evopsych, and that’s not the discussion I want to get into at the moment. Suffice it to say that I think when I admit that the idea of human flourishing makes me smile, I am admitting to not being completely selfish.
On (3), I again don’t have much disagreement. I’m not advocating for selfishness in the sense of not caring about anyone else. I’m just asking us to recognize that our preferences are subjective and not binding on anyone else. Those preferences are obviously complicated and sometimes self-contradictory. Egoism is not Objectivism.
Still I think this line of thinking is extremely important because it means that people won’t agree with any proposal for a morality that isn’t useful for them, and keeping this in mind makes it a lot easier to propose moralities that will actually be adopted.