Jack comments on Not By Empathy Alone - Less Wrong

19 Post author: gwern 05 October 2011 12:36AM

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Comment author: irrational 05 October 2011 04:59:15AM 9 points [-]

Fifth, there are victimless transgressions, such as necrophilia, consensual sibling incest, destruction of (unpopulated) places in the environment, or desecration of a grave of someone who has no surviving relative. Empathy makes no sense in these cases.

It is also unclear to me that these should be subject to any moral judgement.

Comment author: Jack 05 October 2011 08:35:50PM *  1 point [-]

That you, I and lots of people here share a morality that de-emphasizes or abandons judgments that stem from the purity/sanctity pillar does not mean that those moral judgments do not need to be accounted for by a theory of morality. Note that wedrifid's popular reply to your comment defends one of the few purity-based moral judgments common among the liberal/cosmopolitan demographic cluster.

The problem is Prinz actively conflates metaethical concerns -- concerns about the adequacy of a theory of morality based centrally on empathy-- and normative concerns about whether our moral system does a good job at making the world a better place, or something. The above examples of victimless transgressions are good evidence for his metaethical thesis but irrelevant for the normative thesis.