Something in this view feels a bit circular to me, correct me if I’m way off mark.
Question: why assume that moral intuitions are derived from pre-existing intuitions for property rights, and not the other way around?
Reply: because property rights work (“property rights at least appear to be a system for people with diverse goals to coordinate use of scarce resources”), and if they are based on some completely unrelated set of intuitions (morality) then that would be a huge coincidence.
Re-reply: yeah, but it can also be argued that morality ‘at least appears to be a system for people with diverse goals to coordinate use of scarce resources’, those resources being life and welfare. More “moral” societies seem to face less chaos and destruction, after all. It works too. It could be that these came first, and property rights followed. It even makes more evolutionary/historical sense.
So in other words, we may be able to reduce the entire comparison to just saying that moral intuitions are based on a set of rules of thumb that helped societies survive (much like property rights helped societies prosper), which is basically what every evolutionarist would say when asked what’s the deal with moralilty.
And this issue is totally explored already, the general answers ranging from consequentialism—our intuitions, whatever their source, are just suggestions that need to be optimized on the basis of the outcomes of each action—and trolley-problem-morals—we ought to explore the bounds and specifics of our moral intuitions and build our ethics on top of that.
Something in this view feels a bit circular to me, correct me if I’m way off mark.
Question: why assume that moral intuitions are derived from pre-existing intuitions for property rights, and not the other way around?
Reply: because property rights work (“property rights at least appear to be a system for people with diverse goals to coordinate use of scarce resources”), and if they are based on some completely unrelated set of intuitions (morality) then that would be a huge coincidence.
Re-reply: yeah, but it can also be argued that morality ‘at least appears to be a system for people with diverse goals to coordinate use of scarce resources’, those resources being life and welfare. More “moral” societies seem to face less chaos and destruction, after all. It works too. It could be that these came first, and property rights followed. It even makes more evolutionary/historical sense.
So in other words, we may be able to reduce the entire comparison to just saying that moral intuitions are based on a set of rules of thumb that helped societies survive (much like property rights helped societies prosper), which is basically what every evolutionarist would say when asked what’s the deal with moralilty.
And this issue is totally explored already, the general answers ranging from consequentialism—our intuitions, whatever their source, are just suggestions that need to be optimized on the basis of the outcomes of each action—and trolley-problem-morals—we ought to explore the bounds and specifics of our moral intuitions and build our ethics on top of that.