Comment on Impartial ethics and personal decisions

Sun, 08 Mar 2015 16:31:09 GMT

But that presupposes that I value cooperation with you. I don't think it's possible to get moral weights from an outside source even in principle; you have to decide that the outside source in question is worth it, which implies you are weighing it against your actual, internal values.

I think you're mixing up levels, here. You have your internal values, by which you decide that you like being alive and doing your thing, and I have my internal values, by which I decide that I like being alive and doing my thing. Then there's the local king, who decides that if we don't play by his rules, his servants will imprison or kill us. You and I both look at our values and decide that it's better to play by the king's rules than not play by the king's rules.

If one of those rules is "enforce my rules," now when the two of us meet we both expect the other to be playing by the king's rules and willing to punish us for not playing by the king's rules. This is way better than not having any expectations about the other person.

Moral talk is basically "what are the rules that we are both playing by? What should they be?". It would be bad if I pulled the lever to save five people, thinking that this would make me a hero, and then I get shamed or arrested for causing the death of the one person. The reasons to play by the rules at all are personal: appreciating following the rules in an internal way, appreciating other people's appreciation of you, and fearing other people's reprisal if you violate the rules badly enough.

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