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PhilGoetz comments on Suffering - Less Wrong
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BTW, I think the most important defining feature of an MSA is ability to kick people's asses. Very humanizing.
I don't know if you meant that as a joke, but that's pretty much my take from a contractarian perspective (though I wouldn't use the phrase "morally significant agent"). Fish can't do much about us cooking and eating them, so they are not a party to any social contract. That's also the logic behind my tolerance of infanticide.
That's using the word "moral" to mean its opposite. Or, it's a claim that "morality" is a nonsensical concept, disguised as an alternate view of morality.
You need to read something by Gauthier or Binmore. The idea that morality is closely related to rational self-interest is hardly a crackpot idea. There are at least two lines of argument pointing in this direction.
One derives from Hume's point that a system of morality must not only inform us as to what actions are moral, but also show why we should perform only the moral actions.
The other observes that "moral facts" are simply our moral intuitions, and that those have been shaped by evolution into a pretty good caricature of rational self-interest.
A 'morality" which takes into account the power of others may be un-Christian, but it is hardly inhuman.