Comment on What is Metaethics?

Mon, 02 May 2011 17:13:26 GMT

"It is morally wrong for Alice to lie to Bob."

Due to your genetically hard-coded intuitions about appropriate behavior within groups of primates, your upbringing, cultural influences, rational knowledge about the virtues of truth-telling and preferences involving the well-being of other people, you feel obliged to influence the intercourse between Alice and Bob in a way that persuades Alice to do what you want, without feeling inappropriately influenced by you, by signaling your objection to certain behaviors as an appeal to the order of higher authority .

"It is morally wrong for Bob to strangle Alice."

If you say, "I don't want you to strangle Alice.", Bob might reply, "I don't care what you want!".

If you say, "Strangling Alice might have detrimental effects on your other preferences.", Bob might reply, "I assign infinite utility to the death of Alice!" (which might very well be the case for humans in a temporary rage).

But if you say, "It is morally wrong to strangle Alice.", Bob might get confused and reply, "You are right, I don't want to be immoral!". Which is really a form of coercive persuasion. Since when you say, "It is morally wrong to strangle Alice.", you actually signal, "If you strangle Alice you will feel guilty.". It is a manipulative method that might make Bob say, "You are right, I don't want to be immoral!", when what he actually means is, "I don't want to feel guilty!".

Primates don't like to be readily controled by other primates. To get them to do what you want you have to make them believe that, for some non-obvious reason, they actually want to do it themselves.

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