Short summary: You are mixing together two different views -- timeful and timeless view.
This sounds right to me, and I think your subsequent analysis is on target. So we have two views, the timeless view and the timeful view and we can't (at least directly) translate ethical principles like 'minimize evils' across the views. So say we grant this and move on from here. Maybe my question is just that the timeless view is one in which ethics seems to make no sense (or at least not the same kind of sense), and the timeful view is a view in which it is a pressing concern. Would you object to that?
the timeless view is one in which ethics seems to make no sense
I didn't fully realize that previously, but yes -- in the timeless view there is no time, no change, no choice. Ethics is all about choices.
Ethical reasoning only makes sense in time, because the process of ethical reasoning is moving the particles in your brain, and the physical consequence of that can be a good or evil action. Ethics can have an influence on universe only if it is a part of the universe. The whole universe is determined only by its laws and its contents. The only way ethic...
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