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
I'll try to present an argument toward Kant's views in a clear way. The argument will consist of a couple of hopefully non-puzzling scenarios for moral evaluation, an evaluation I expect at least to be intuitive to you (though perhaps not endorsed wholeheartedly), leading to the conclusion that you do not in fact concern yourself with consequences when making a moral evaluation. At some point, I expect, I'll make a claim that you disagree with, and at that point we can discuss, if you like, where the disagreement lies exactly. So:
It's common for consequentialists to evaluate actions in terms of expected rather than actual consequences: the philanthropist who donates to an efficient charity is generally not thought less morally good if some uncontrollable and unpredictable event prevents the good she expected to achieve. While we are ready to say that what happened in such a case was bad, we would not say that it was a moral bad, at least not on the philanthropists part.
If we grant this, then we have already admitted that the important factor in moral evaluations are not any actual events in the world, but rather something like expected consequences. In other words, moral evaluation deals with a mental event related to an action (i.e. the expectation of a certain consequence), not, or at least not directly, the consequence of that event.
And Kant would go further to point out that it's not quite just expected consequences either. We do not evaluate equally a philanthropist who donates to an efficient charity to spite her neighbor (expecting, but ignoring, the fact that this donation will also do some good for others) and one who donates out of a desire to do some good for others (say, expecting but ignoring the fact that this donation will also upset her neighbor). Both philanthropists expect the same consequences to play out, but we do not evaluate them equally.
So it is not expected (rather than actual) consequences that are the important factor in moral evaluations, because we can detect differences in our evaluations even when these are equal. Rather, Kant would go on to say, we evaluate actions on the basis of the reasons people have for bringing about the consequences they expect. (There are other options here, of course, and so the argument could go on).
If you've accepted every premise thus far, I think you're pretty close to being in range of Kant's argument for the CI. Has that helped?
I don't accept this premise. A philanthropist whose actions lead to good consequences is morally better than a ... (read more)