I find the first claim plausible though not certain, but I would expect that if such individual convergence happens, it will lead to collective divergence not convergence.
When we are young, our moral intuitions and beliefs are a hodge-podge of different things, derived from a wide variety of sources, probably reflecting something like a “consensus morality” that is the average of different moral positions in society. If/when we begin to reflect on these intuitions and beliefs, we will find that they are mutually contradictory. But one person’s modus ponens is another’s modus tollens: faced with the fact that a utilitarian intuition and a deontological intuition contradict each other, say, we might end up rejecting the utilitarian conclusion, rejecting the deontological conclusion, or trying to somehow reconcile them. Since logic by itself does not tell us which alternative we should choose, it becomes determined by extra-logical factors.
Given that different people seem to arrive at different conclusions when presented with such contradictory cases, and given that their judgement seems to be at least weakly predicted by their existing overall leanings, I would guess that the choice of which intuition to embrace would depend on their current balance of other intutions. Thus, if you are already leaning utilitarian, the intuitions which are making you lean that way may combine together and cause you to reject the deontological intuition, and vice versa if you’re learning deontologist. This would mean that a person who initially started with an even mix of both intuitions would, by random drift, eventually end up in a position where one set of intuitions was dominant, after which there would be a self-reinforcing trajectory towards an area increasingly dominated by intuitions compatible with the ones currently dominant. (Though of course the process that determines which intuitions get accepted and which ones get rejected is nowhere as simple as just taking a “majority vote” of intuitions, and some intuitions may be felt so strongly that they are almost impossible to reject.) This would mean that as people carried out self-reflection, their position would end up increasingly idiosyncratic and distant from the consensus morality. This seems to be roughly compatible with what I have anecdotally observed in various people, though my sample size is relatively small.
I feel that I have personally been undergoing this kind of a drift: I originally had the generic consensus morality that one adopts by spending their childhood in a Western country, after which I began reading LW, which worked to select and reinforce my existing set of utilitarian intuitions—but had I not already been utilitarian-leaning, the utilitarian emphasis on LW might have led me to reject those claims and seek out a (say) more deontological influence. But as time has gone by, I have become increasingly aware of the fact that some of my strongest intuitions lean towards negative utilitarianism, whereas LW is more akin to classical utilitarianism. Reflecting upon various intuitions has led me to gradually reject various intuitions that I previously took to support classical rather than negative utilitarianism, thus causing me to move away from the general LW consensus. And since this process has caused some of the intuitions that previously supported a classical utilitarian position to lose their appeal, I expect that moving back towards CU is less likely than continued movement towards NU.
I find the first claim plausible though not certain, but I would expect that if such individual convergence happens, it will lead to collective divergence not convergence.
When we are young, our moral intuitions and beliefs are a hodge-podge of different things, derived from a wide variety of sources, probably reflecting something like a “consensus morality” that is the average of different moral positions in society. If/when we begin to reflect on these intuitions and beliefs, we will find that they are mutually contradictory. But one person’s modus ponens is another’s modus tollens: faced with the fact that a utilitarian intuition and a deontological intuition contradict each other, say, we might end up rejecting the utilitarian conclusion, rejecting the deontological conclusion, or trying to somehow reconcile them. Since logic by itself does not tell us which alternative we should choose, it becomes determined by extra-logical factors.
Given that different people seem to arrive at different conclusions when presented with such contradictory cases, and given that their judgement seems to be at least weakly predicted by their existing overall leanings, I would guess that the choice of which intuition to embrace would depend on their current balance of other intutions. Thus, if you are already leaning utilitarian, the intuitions which are making you lean that way may combine together and cause you to reject the deontological intuition, and vice versa if you’re learning deontologist. This would mean that a person who initially started with an even mix of both intuitions would, by random drift, eventually end up in a position where one set of intuitions was dominant, after which there would be a self-reinforcing trajectory towards an area increasingly dominated by intuitions compatible with the ones currently dominant. (Though of course the process that determines which intuitions get accepted and which ones get rejected is nowhere as simple as just taking a “majority vote” of intuitions, and some intuitions may be felt so strongly that they are almost impossible to reject.) This would mean that as people carried out self-reflection, their position would end up increasingly idiosyncratic and distant from the consensus morality. This seems to be roughly compatible with what I have anecdotally observed in various people, though my sample size is relatively small.
I feel that I have personally been undergoing this kind of a drift: I originally had the generic consensus morality that one adopts by spending their childhood in a Western country, after which I began reading LW, which worked to select and reinforce my existing set of utilitarian intuitions—but had I not already been utilitarian-leaning, the utilitarian emphasis on LW might have led me to reject those claims and seek out a (say) more deontological influence. But as time has gone by, I have become increasingly aware of the fact that some of my strongest intuitions lean towards negative utilitarianism, whereas LW is more akin to classical utilitarianism. Reflecting upon various intuitions has led me to gradually reject various intuitions that I previously took to support classical rather than negative utilitarianism, thus causing me to move away from the general LW consensus. And since this process has caused some of the intuitions that previously supported a classical utilitarian position to lose their appeal, I expect that moving back towards CU is less likely than continued movement towards NU.