I’m really confused about this. It seems like you’re arguing that every consideration or analysis of any principle must also include any ‘justified exception’. I’m not arguing that any particular justified exception is impossible, but that it should be considered separate from the principle to which it is an exception – not part of the principle itself. Lumping principles and their justified exceptions seems strictly less useful in general; one reason being that which exceptions are justified is yet another potential axis of disagreement. It also seems almost designed to be maximally confusing.
Are you claiming that people should adopt a rhetorical rule of assuming that ‘pacifism’ actually refers to the base principle and its ‘justified exceptions’? How would that work in practice? In particular, what are (all of) the justified exceptions to pacifism? How should people refer to the base principle instead, e.g. when discussing which exceptions exactly are justified or not? How should people refer to the base principle in the case where they don’t think any exceptions are justified?
To make this even more meta, do you presume that there are justified exceptions to every possible principle? Are there no justified exceptions to that principle?
Applying moral principles to the real world requires complex reasoned judgement. Making the principles pure or absolute is an attempt to make the required judgement formulaic instead, often due to a cynicism about individual judgement abilities of people, and this wittingly or unwittingly leads to a paradoxical outcome like in the paradox of tolerance.
So, is your idea that, because of the general principle (ha) of ‘intellectual charity’, we should – typically at least, or maybe by default – habitually steelman principled arguments to automatically include any justified exceptions of which we’re aware?
I think maybe it’d be better to simply offer to, and query, our fellow reasoners about which justified exceptions they accept for any principles under discussion.
Making the principles pure or absolute is an attempt to make the required judgement formulaic instead, often due to a cynicism about individual judgement abilities of people, …
It’s in general, in my experience anyways, difficult to distinguish between cynicism and realism. People really are, or seem to be, pretty bad reasoners in a lot of situations. We really do seem to be still, mostly, running how-to-get-along-in-a-small-tribal-band software, particularly when doing moral reasoning. Do you really trust most people to make good moral judgements generally? I’m on the fence, tho I do lean to a kind of Taoist ‘people are naturally good’ stance (‘attitude’). But I’m also regularly watching for strong evidence of specific people’s actual moral decisions and reasoning – and ‘cynicism’ isn’t always wrong.
I’m really confused about this. It seems like you’re arguing that every consideration or analysis of any principle must also include any ‘justified exception’. I’m not arguing that any particular justified exception is impossible, but that it should be considered separate from the principle to which it is an exception – not part of the principle itself. Lumping principles and their justified exceptions seems strictly less useful in general; one reason being that which exceptions are justified is yet another potential axis of disagreement. It also seems almost designed to be maximally confusing.
Are you claiming that people should adopt a rhetorical rule of assuming that ‘pacifism’ actually refers to the base principle and its ‘justified exceptions’? How would that work in practice? In particular, what are (all of) the justified exceptions to pacifism? How should people refer to the base principle instead, e.g. when discussing which exceptions exactly are justified or not? How should people refer to the base principle in the case where they don’t think any exceptions are justified?
To make this even more meta, do you presume that there are justified exceptions to every possible principle? Are there no justified exceptions to that principle?
Applying moral principles to the real world requires complex reasoned judgement. Making the principles pure or absolute is an attempt to make the required judgement formulaic instead, often due to a cynicism about individual judgement abilities of people, and this wittingly or unwittingly leads to a paradoxical outcome like in the paradox of tolerance.
So, is your idea that, because of the general principle (ha) of ‘intellectual charity’, we should – typically at least, or maybe by default – habitually steelman principled arguments to automatically include any justified exceptions of which we’re aware?
I think maybe it’d be better to simply offer to, and query, our fellow reasoners about which justified exceptions they accept for any principles under discussion.
It’s in general, in my experience anyways, difficult to distinguish between cynicism and realism. People really are, or seem to be, pretty bad reasoners in a lot of situations. We really do seem to be still, mostly, running how-to-get-along-in-a-small-tribal-band software, particularly when doing moral reasoning. Do you really trust most people to make good moral judgements generally? I’m on the fence, tho I do lean to a kind of Taoist ‘people are naturally good’ stance (‘attitude’). But I’m also regularly watching for strong evidence of specific people’s actual moral decisions and reasoning – and ‘cynicism’ isn’t always wrong.