Clear, agreed notions of what was a “bad person” would be essentially equivalent to solving most moral questions.
I agree that clear agreed upon notions of what a ‘bad person’ is would amount to clear and agreed upon notions of morality. But I think we clearly have the latter, and so the former as well. We may bounce back and forth over tricky cases, like your charitable thief, but that doesn’t mean we are in a state of fundamental confusion or disagreement about anything. (EDIT: notice, for example that you didn’t just ask me ‘is a thief a bad person?’)
So does one mean such beliefs when related to intelligence? Or does one mean people who assign lower moral worth to some races? if the last is the case, then your statement is probably true by most definitions of “bad people” but then completely useless and uninteresting for the discussion at hand.
This last point would follow if intelligence were as irrelevant to moral worth as is a vulnerability for blood diseases. But we evidentially don’t think it is irrelevant. If I told a random black person on the street that I thought him more vulnerable to sickle-cell on the basis of his race, he would probably just agree with me. If I said he was probably stupid, on the basis of his race, he would (rightly, I think) call me a racist in the morally pejorative sense.
So again, it’s an open question as to what exactly the relationship is between intelligence and moral value such that this is different from the relationship between vulnerability to blood-disease and moral value. The fact that this is an open question should leave open the option that intelligence has nothing to do with moral value, as you imply. Yet I think we have substantial intuitive evidence that this isn’t a good way to go.
I agree that clear agreed upon notions of what a ‘bad person’ is would amount to clear and agreed upon notions of morality. But I think we clearly have the latter, and so the former as well. We may bounce back and forth over tricky cases, like your charitable thief, but that doesn’t mean we are in a state of fundamental confusion or disagreement about anything. (EDIT: notice, for example that you didn’t just ask me ‘is a thief a bad person?’)
This last point would follow if intelligence were as irrelevant to moral worth as is a vulnerability for blood diseases. But we evidentially don’t think it is irrelevant. If I told a random black person on the street that I thought him more vulnerable to sickle-cell on the basis of his race, he would probably just agree with me. If I said he was probably stupid, on the basis of his race, he would (rightly, I think) call me a racist in the morally pejorative sense.
So again, it’s an open question as to what exactly the relationship is between intelligence and moral value such that this is different from the relationship between vulnerability to blood-disease and moral value. The fact that this is an open question should leave open the option that intelligence has nothing to do with moral value, as you imply. Yet I think we have substantial intuitive evidence that this isn’t a good way to go.