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DeVliegendeHollander comments on Open thread, Mar. 2 - Mar. 8, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I think one reason is that as soon as one tries to build ethics from scratch, one is unable to find any justification that sounds like "ethics" for favouring those close to oneself over those more distant. Lacking such a magic pattern of words, they conclude that universalism must be axiomatically true.
In Peter Singer's view, to fail to save the life of a remote child is exactly as culpable as to starve your own children. His argument consists of presenting the image of a remote child and a near one and challenging the reader to justify treating them unequally. It's not a subject I particularly keep up on; has anyone made a substantial argument against Singerian ethics?
It is often observed here that favouring those close to oneself over those more distant is universally practised. It has not been much argued for though. Here are a couple of arguments.
It is universally practiced and universally approved of, to favour family and friends. It is, for the most part, also approved of to help more distant people in need; but there are very few who demand that people should place them on an equal footing. Therefore, if there is such a thing as Human!ethics or CEV, it must include that.
As we have learned from economics, society in general works better when people look after their own business first and limit their inclination to meddle in other people's. This applies in the moral area as well as the economic.
I think that is the issue. "Sounds like ethics" when you go back to Kant, comes from Christian universalism. Aristotle etc. were less universal.
Is Singer even serious? He made the argument that if I find eating humans wrong, I should find eating animals also wrong because they are not very different. I mean, how isn't it OBVIOUS that would not be an argument against eating animals but an argument for eating humans? Because unethical behavior is the default and ethical is the special case. Take away speciality and it is back to the jungle. To me it is so obvious I hardly even think it needs much discussion... ethics is that thing you do in the special rare cases when you don't do what you want to do, but what you feel you ought to. Non-special ethics is not ethics, unless you are a saint.
I see no reason to doubt that he means exactly what he says.
Modus ponens, or modus tollens? White and gold, or blue and black?
On the whole, we observe that people naturally care for their children, including those who still live in jungles. There is an obvious evolutionary argument that this is not because this has been drummed into them by ethical preaching without which their natural inclination would be to eat them.
To be a little Chestertonian, the obvious needs discussion precisely because it is obvious. Also a theme of Socrates. Some things are justifiably obvious: one can clearly see the reasons for a thing being true. For others, "obvious" just means "I'm not even aware I believe this." As Eliezer put it:
Most people who are against eating human children would also be against eating human children grown in such a way as to not have brains. Yet clearly, few of the ethical arguments apply to eating human children without brains. So the default isn't "ethical behavior", it's "some arbitrary set of rules that may happen to include ethical behavior at times".