1) Supposing that moral progress is possible, why would I want to make such progress?
2) Psychological experiments such as the Stanford prison experiment suggest to me that people do not act morally when empowered not to do so. So if I were moral I would prefer to remain powerless, but I do not want to be powerless, therefore I perform my moral acts unwillingly.
3) Suppose that agents of type X act more morally than agents of type Y. Also suppose that the moral acts impact on fitness such that type Y agents out-reproduce type X agents. If the product of population size and moral utility is greater for Y than X then Y is the greater producer of moral good.
So is net morality important or morality per capita? How about a very moral population of size 0? What is the trade off between net and per capita moral output?
4) Predicting the long-term outcomes of our actions is very difficult. If the moral value of an act depends on the outcome, then our confidence in the morality of an act should be less than or equal to our confidence in the possible outcomes.
However, peoples’ confidence in their morality is often much higher than their confidence in the outcome. Therefore, there must be a component of morality independent of outcome. What does the desirability of this component derive from?
1) Supposing that moral progress is possible, why would I want to make such progress?
2) Psychological experiments such as the Stanford prison experiment suggest to me that people do not act morally when empowered not to do so. So if I were moral I would prefer to remain powerless, but I do not want to be powerless, therefore I perform my moral acts unwillingly.
3) Suppose that agents of type X act more morally than agents of type Y. Also suppose that the moral acts impact on fitness such that type Y agents out-reproduce type X agents. If the product of population size and moral utility is greater for Y than X then Y is the greater producer of moral good.
So is net morality important or morality per capita? How about a very moral population of size 0? What is the trade off between net and per capita moral output?
4) Predicting the long-term outcomes of our actions is very difficult. If the moral value of an act depends on the outcome, then our confidence in the morality of an act should be less than or equal to our confidence in the possible outcomes.
However, peoples’ confidence in their morality is often much higher than their confidence in the outcome. Therefore, there must be a component of morality independent of outcome. What does the desirability of this component derive from?