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buybuydandavis comments on My Kind of Moral Responsibility - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: Gram_Stone 02 May 2016 05:54AM

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Comment author: buybuydandavis 02 May 2016 01:34:02PM 3 points [-]

Virtue ethicists replace the question with, "Does it feel like indifference is as 'bad' as 'evil'?" They answer, "No."

I haven't read the relevant literature, but I wouldn't think this is actually the question they are asking themselves. I don't see any virtue based conceptual framework referred to in the question.

Any virtue ethicists out their who could weight in?

Comment author: Gram_Stone 02 May 2016 01:46:19PM *  2 points [-]

Thanks for speaking up. I just framed this as a verbal question for convenience. Massimo talks about how utilitarianism leads him to the conclusion that most people must be extremely bad, and that this is counterintuitive enough for him to reject utilitarianism. My hypothesis is that he means that the way that his brain natively evaluates responsibility does not agree with an evaluation of responsibility that is equivalent to asking "What are the consequences of this action or inaction?" Virtue-ethical language doesn't come into play because they're looking for reasons not to be utilitarians, not ways to be virtue ethicists. Does that make sense?

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