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Lumifer comments on Rationality Quotes September 2014 - Less Wrong
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I am not sure -- I see your point, but completely ignoring the actual outcome seems iffy to me. There are, of course, many different ways of judging morality and, empirically, a lot of them do care about realized outcomes.
I don't know what a "genuine extrapolated prior" is.
Well, behaving according to the "reasonable person" standard is a legal obligation :-)
That's because we live in a world where people's inner states are not apparent, perhaps not even to themselves. So we revert to (a) what would a reasonable person believe, (b) what actually happened. The latter is unfortunate in that it condemns many who are merely morally unlucky and acquits many who are merely morally lucky, but that's life. The actual bad outcomes serve as "blameable moments". What can I say - it's not great, but better than speculating on other people's psychological states.
In a world where mental states could be subpoenaed, Clifford would have both a correct and an actionable theory of the ethics of belief; as it is I think it correct but not entirely actionable.
That which would be arrived at by a reasonable person (not necessarily a Bayesian calculator, but somebody not actually self-deceptive) updating on the same evidence.
A related issue is sincerity; Clifford says the shipowner is sincere in his beliefs, but I tend to think in such cases there is usually a belief/alief mismatch.
I love this passage from Clifford and I can't believe it wasn't posted here before. By the way, William James mounted a critique of Clifford's views in an address you can read here; I encourage you to do so as James presents some cases that are interesting to think about if you (like me) largely agree with Clifford.
That's not self-evident to me. First, in this particular case as you yourself note, "Clifford says the shipowner is sincere in his belief". Second, in general, what are you going to do about, basically, stupid people who quite sincerely do not anticipate the consequences of their actions?
That would be a posterior, not a prior.
I think Clifford was wrong to say the shipowner was sincere in his belief. In the situation he describes, the belief is insincere - indeed such situations define what I think "insincere belief" ought to mean.
Good question. Ought implies can, so in extreme cases I'd consider that to diminish their culpability. For less extreme cases - heh, I had never thought about it before, but I think the "reasonable man" standard is implicitly IQ-normalized. :)
Sure.
This is called fighting the hypothetical.
While that may be so, the Clifford approach relying on the subpoenaed mental states relies on mental states and not on any external standard (including the one called "resonable person").