Comment on Does utilitarianism "require" extreme self sacrifice? If not why do people commonly say it does?

Fri, 12 Dec 2014 22:28:26 GMT

This makes sense... and the idea of 'praiseworthy/benevolent' shows that Moralos do have the concept of a full ranking.

So we could look at this as Moralos having a ranking plus an 'obligation rule' that tells you how good an outcome you're obligated to achieve in a given situation, while Moralps don't accept such a rule and instead just play it by ear.

Justifying an obligation rule seems philosophically tough... unless you justify it as a heuristic, in which case you get to think like a Moralp and act like a Moralo, and abandon your heuristic if it seems like it's breaking down. Taking Giving What We Can's 10% pledge is a good example of adopting such a heuristic.

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