Moral reasoning is useful only as a guide to behavior (twins)
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Date: March 3rd, 2017 5:27 PM Author: impertinent orchestra pit windowlicker
The point of moral thinking is to guide behavior. I am using the term behavior here to include backing one faction or another in a war.
At modern scale, the action priming logic of moral thinking breaks down. We are bombarded with sundry moral dilemmas, and left with no way to ACT on any of our conclusions. It is as if we're endlessly sorting ourselves into coalitions for a war that never comes.
The result is neverending frustration - particularly for those canny enough to sense early that their individual contributions to larger causes matter little. It is downright unnatural to hear of some moral offense and have no avenue to do anything about it - but this is what we endure every day.
With the populace's impulse to moral action overloaded, only sociopaths can act.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3542504&forum_id=2#32746212) |
Date: December 14th, 2017 5:32 PM Author: Dashing Ticket Booth Associate
what do you think of how this affects deontologists vs consequentialists? as someone who is naturally consequentialist, this modern arrangement rarely bothers me. so what if the world churns out injustices that i can do nothing about? i can only control the consequences of my own actions, and those around me who i influence.
but i've found that most people who are naturally deontologists can't help but get very upset when they encounter these sorts of moral discrepancies. they just can't get past the "Something wrong is happening!!" stage and get stuck in a moral outrage loop. i suspect that this is what causes a lot of these people to latch on so strongly to things like SJWism, that paint the world in broad generalist moral strokes.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3542504&forum_id=2#34920577) |
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Date: December 14th, 2017 5:41 PM Author: impertinent orchestra pit windowlicker
That's an empirical question I don't know the answer to.
My hypothesis would be no difference. I tend to think meta-ethical theories are empty, in that they're both (i) pitched at a level of abstraction too high to provide real guidance in actual ethical dilemmas, which tend to be highly situation-specific; and, (ii) too convoluted in their features to provide guidance on rich, situation-specific ethical quandaries in the real world. Given this prior (call it inconsequentialism), I doubt there would be an observable difference between groups of consequentialists vs. deontologists -- if we're even able to gather enough people who are stably one vs. the other (it's been challenging).
On a related note, I was thinking about trolley problems and such recently. It struck me that oftentimes, moral problems that seem "easy" might in some abstract sense be very hard; it's just they've been encountered by communities many times, so they're either hard-wired or early-learned. In contrast, moral problems that seem "hard" are likely to be either practically irrelevant or insoluble; for if they were soluble and came up frequently, they'd seem "easy" (to competent actors embedded in a competent moral community).
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3542504&forum_id=2#34920626) |
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Date: December 14th, 2017 5:56 PM Author: Dashing Ticket Booth Associate
meta-ethical theories may be empty in the abstract (i agree), but in practice, i've found that people's personalities generally fall along deontologist vs. consequentialist lines. i am referring to their actual patterns of action. listening to what someone *says* is their moral calculus is like listening to what a woman *says* she is really attracted to.
the 2nd paragraph is definitely on point. i would think that individual capability to grasp the group morality of one's people would be selected for like any other pro-social human trait. the only moral problems that are relevant to us have already been absorbed into our genetic memory. "moral" questions like "is it immoral to rape a sexbot?" are so disconnected from any of our experience that they are almost meaningless.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3542504&forum_id=2#34920768)
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Date: December 14th, 2017 6:04 PM Author: impertinent orchestra pit windowlicker
That's fair re: (i); I'd understood you to be asking about self-report not observed behavior. But now I fear there's almost (_almost_) question-begging as to your initial query, in that you're telling me people's observed behaviors fall into either a deontological or consequentialist pattern, and you've told me consequentialists seem to react differently to the news, meaning (I'm supposing) that one of the manifestations of being a consequentialist or deontologist is your reaction to the news.
That aside, I can't say I've reliably observed people falling into a consequentialist or deontologist camp. Rather, people to me seem to pick and choose their moral frame based on habit, convenience, mental constraints, etc. They may use a deontologic justification for a consequentialist result, etc. But you could very well be right in your observations; it's just not something I've seen, except perhaps inasmuch as there are "simple-minded, naive" deontologists who also tend to be emotionally labile, such that they react to the news -- but then I'd ascribe both tendencies to a third causal factor (being simple of heart & mind) & not ascribe causation to the deontologic tendencies.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3542504&forum_id=2#34920823) |
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Date: December 14th, 2017 6:23 PM Author: Dashing Ticket Booth Associate
yes, it certainly seems to me that deontologists and consequentialists react to the news differently, as far as those indivuduals appear to self-evidently fall into one of these categories.
i am the same way regarding evaluating deontologists who seem to be vulnerable to emotional factors and simple-mindedness. but i can't tell if my evaluations of them are accurate, or if i am just biased because i find their way of seeing the world so foreign and different from my own.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3542504&forum_id=2#34920982)
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