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bbleeker comments on Wild Moral Dilemmas - Less Wrong Discussion
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To keep to the dog-kicking example, there are 3 kinds of people:
1. People who'd never kick a dog in any circumstances.
2. People who'd normally never kick a dog, but might do it if the dog keeps running in front of their feet when they urgently need to catch a train to get to a job interview that might save them from having to live under a bridge.
3. People who love kicking dogs and do it anytime they think they can get away with it.
Maybe you think that the 2s aren't good enough, but surely they're a whole lot better than the 3s (IMO they're quite close to 1s, much closer than to the 3s). The FAE is what happens when you see a 2 kicking a dog for the first and only time in his life, and you decide he's a 3.
It is a bit of a deeper issue. Let's take something truly unacceptable, like rampaging murder. Doesn't FAE say a normal person can be provoked into it? If yes, the normal person is not good enough.
All the FAE says is that people tend to attribute things to other people's innate characteristics, when in fact their circumstances may be much more important, but in their own case they explain any bad acts by pointing at the circumstances. It doesn't say that people don't have any innate tendencies at all.
In fact, it's just as valid to say that the FAE is about our refusal to admit some of our innate tendencies are bad.