It seems people are interpreting the question in two different ways, one that we don’t have any desires any more, and therefore no actions, and the other in the more natural way, namely that “moral philosophy” and “moral claims” have no meaning or are all false. The first way of interpreting the question is useless, and I guess Eliezer intended the second.
Most commenters are saying that it would make no difference to them. My suspicion is that this is true, but mainly because they already believe that moral claims are meaningless or false.
Possibly (I am not sure of this) Eliezer hopes that everyone will answer in this way, so that he can say that morality is unnecessary.
Personally, I agree with Dynamically Linked. I would start out by stealing wallets and purses, and it would just go downhill from there. In other words, if I didn’t believe that such things were wrong, the bad feeling that results from doing them, and the idea that it hurts people, wouldn’t be strong enough to stop me, and once I got started, the feeling would go away too—this much I know from the experience of doing wrong. And once I had changed the way I feel about these things, the way I feel about other things (too horrible to mention at the moment) would begin to change too. So I can’t really tell where it would end, but it would be bad (according to my present judgment).
There are others who would follow or have followed the same course. TGGP says that over time his life did change after he ceased to believe in morality, and at one point he said that he would torture a stranger to avoid stubbing his toe, which presumably he would not have done when he believed in morality.
So if it is the case that Eliezer hoped that morality is unnecessary to prevent such things, his hope is in vain.
It seems people are interpreting the question in two different ways, one that we don’t have any desires any more, and therefore no actions, and the other in the more natural way, namely that “moral philosophy” and “moral claims” have no meaning or are all false. The first way of interpreting the question is useless, and I guess Eliezer intended the second.
Most commenters are saying that it would make no difference to them. My suspicion is that this is true, but mainly because they already believe that moral claims are meaningless or false.
Possibly (I am not sure of this) Eliezer hopes that everyone will answer in this way, so that he can say that morality is unnecessary.
Personally, I agree with Dynamically Linked. I would start out by stealing wallets and purses, and it would just go downhill from there. In other words, if I didn’t believe that such things were wrong, the bad feeling that results from doing them, and the idea that it hurts people, wouldn’t be strong enough to stop me, and once I got started, the feeling would go away too—this much I know from the experience of doing wrong. And once I had changed the way I feel about these things, the way I feel about other things (too horrible to mention at the moment) would begin to change too. So I can’t really tell where it would end, but it would be bad (according to my present judgment).
There are others who would follow or have followed the same course. TGGP says that over time his life did change after he ceased to believe in morality, and at one point he said that he would torture a stranger to avoid stubbing his toe, which presumably he would not have done when he believed in morality.
So if it is the case that Eliezer hoped that morality is unnecessary to prevent such things, his hope is in vain.