Viliam! Thank you!
That was very clear, except for one thing. It seems like you are conflating human desires with morality. The obvious (to me) question is: what happens if, instead of currently loving other people and being aware that I may become a psychopath later, I am a psychopath now and realize I may disposed to become a lover of people later?
I do see how any moral theory becomes deontological at some level. But because the world is complex and the human brain is crazy, I feel like that level ought to be as high as possible in order to obtain the largest amount of sophistication and mental awareness of our actions and their consequences. (More on this in a second). Perhaps I am looking at it backwards, and the simplest, most direct moral rules would be better. While that might be true, I feel like if all moral agents were to introspect and reason properly, such a paradigm would not satisfy us. Though I claim no awesome reasoning or introspection powers, it is unsatisfying to me, at least.
Above I mention consequences again. I don't think this is question begging because I think that I can turn around your argument. Any consequentialism says "don't do X because X would cause Y and Y is bad". Any morality including deontological theories can be interpreted as saying the same thing, one level down. So, "don't do X, not because X would cause Y, but because it might and we aren't sure, so lets just say X is bad. Therefore, don't do X." I don't think this is faulty reasoning at all. In fact, I think it is a safe bet most of the time, (very much using Eliezer's Ethical Injuntions). What I am concerned with about Deontology is that it seems absolute to me. This is why I prefer the injunctions over old school deontology, because it takes into account our error prone and biased brains.
Thanks for the discussion!
It seems like you are conflating human desires with morality.
I am probably using the words incorrectly, because I don't know how philosophers define them, or even whether they can agree on a definition. I essentially used "morality" to mean "any system which says what you should", and added an observation that if you take literally any such system, most of them will not fit your intuition of morality. Why? Because they recommend things you find repulsive or just stupid. But this is a fact about you or about humans in general, so in o...
Hi everyone,
If this has been covered before, I apologize for the clutter and ask to be redirected to the appropriate article or post.
I am increasingly confused about normative theories. I've read both Eliezer's and Luke's meta ethics sequences as well as some of nyan's posts, but I felt even more confused afterwards. Further, I happen to be a philosophy student right now, and I'm worried that the ideas presented in my ethics classes are misguided and "conceptually corrupt" that is, the focus seems to be on defining terms over and over again, as opposed to taking account of real effects of moral ideas in the actual world.
I am looking for two things: first, a guide as to which reductionist moral theories approximate what LW rationalists tend to think are correct. Second, how can I go about my ethics courses without going insane?
Sorry if this seems overly aggressive, I am perhaps wrongfully frustrated right now.
Jeremy