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Peterdjones comments on Conceptual Analysis and Moral Theory - Less Wrong
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In the space of all possible meta-ethics, some meta-ethics are cooperative, and other meta-ethics are not so. This means that if you can choose which metaethics to spread to society, you stand a better chance at your own goals, if you spread cooperative metaethics. And cooperative metaethics is what we call "morality", by and large.
It's "Do unto others...", but abstracted a bit, so that we really mean "Use the reasoning to determine what to do unto others, that you would rather they used when deciding how to do unto you."
Omega puts you in a room with a big red button. "Press this button and you get ten dollars but another person will be poisoned to slowly die. If you don't press it I punch you on the nose and you get no money. They have a similar button which they can use to kill you and get 10 dollars. You can't communicate with them. In fact they think they're the only person being given the option of a button, so this problem isn't exactly like Prisoner's dilemma. They don't even know you exist or that their own life is at stake."
"But here's the offer I'm making just to you, not them. I can imprint you both with the decision theory of your choice, Amanojack; ofcourse if you identify yourself in your decision theory, they'll be identifying themself.
"Careful though: This is a one time offer, and then I may put both of you to further different tests. So choose the decision theory that you want both of you to have, and make it abstract enough to help you survive, regardless of specific circumstances."
Given the above scenario, you'll end up wanting people to choose protecting the life of strangers more than than picking 10 dollars.
Attempts to reduce real, altrusitic ethics back down to selfish/instrumental ethics tend not to work that well, because the gains from co-operation are remote, and there are many realistic instances where selfish action produces immediate rewards (cd the Prudent Predatory objection Rand's egoistic ethics).
OTOH, since many people are selfish, they are made to care by having legal and social sanctions against excessively selfish behaviour.
I wasn't talking about altruistic ethics, which can lead someone to sacrifice their lifes to prevent someone else getting a bruise; and thus would be almost as disastrous as selfishness if widespread. I was talking about cooperative ethics - which overlaps with but doesn't equal altruism, same as it overlaps but doesn't equal selfishness.
The difference between morality and immorality, is that morality can at its most abstract possible level be cooperative, and immorality can't.
This by itself isn't a reason that can force someone to care -- you can't make a rock care about anything, but that's not a problem with your argument. But it's something that leads to different expectations about the world, namely what Amanojack was asking for.
In a world populated by beings whose beliefs approach objective morality, I expect more cooperation and mutual well-being, all other things being equal. In a world whose beliefs don't approach it, i expect more war and other devastation.
Although it usually doesn't.
I think that you version of altruism is a straw man, and that what most people mean by altruism isn't very different from co operation.
Or, as I call it, universalisability.
That argument doesn't have to be made at all. Morality can stand as a refutation of the claim that anticipiation of experience is of ultimate importance. And it can be made differently: if you rejig your values, you can expect to antipate different experiences -- it can be a self-fulffilling prophecy and not merely passive anticipation.
There is an argument from self interest, but it is tertiary to the two arguments I mentioned above.