I’ve occasionally tried to find philosophers offering a reasoned defence of supererogation, of the idea that you are not obliged to do all the good that you could do, but I have not found much, until I looked just now. Here is an article contrasting two conceptions of what morality is: morality of law, and morality of virtue.
The morality of law rules out supererogation. The moral law says what is good, which is necessarily obligatory. Utilitarianism (I say, the article does not) is an example of law-based morality. Yes, you must always and everywhere undertake the best thing you could possibly do: that is what good means. The best possible action is compulsory; all else is forbidden. The utilitarian view is the morality that is generally asserted, if not accepted, on LessWrong and in EA. But it is not the only view.
The morality of virtue enjoins one to cultivate virtue — one’s own virtue. These are certain qualities of character from which certain actions will flow, but it is the character that matters.
The paper is more concerned to argue that the morality of law excludes supererogation (starting from the initial position that the exclusion of supererogation is against our intuitions and requires explaining). It references other work arguing that the morality of virtue may be more welcoming of the concept.
Personally, I find myself more in agreement with the morality of virtue. I will not torture kittens or eat chimpanzees, but I do not much care whether Spain still has bullfights, and I have no qualms about eating meat in general. I am more interested in cultivating my own garden than in whether everyone else has a garden. A mere accumulation of more and more people living much the same lives does not strike me as morally valuable. I value the heights of an unequally distributed civilisation over a uniform mediocrity.
But I have not troubled to build a moral system around these observations of how I live and prefer to live.
The utilitarian view is the morality that is generally asserted, if not accepted, on LessWrong and in EA.
I think those who explicitly talk on LW about what we should do mostly do it from an utilitarian perspective but as far as I remember our census results don’t support that everybody is utilitarian.
I’ve occasionally tried to find philosophers offering a reasoned defence of supererogation, of the idea that you are not obliged to do all the good that you could do, but I have not found much, until I looked just now. Here is an article contrasting two conceptions of what morality is: morality of law, and morality of virtue.
The morality of law rules out supererogation. The moral law says what is good, which is necessarily obligatory. Utilitarianism (I say, the article does not) is an example of law-based morality. Yes, you must always and everywhere undertake the best thing you could possibly do: that is what good means. The best possible action is compulsory; all else is forbidden. The utilitarian view is the morality that is generally asserted, if not accepted, on LessWrong and in EA. But it is not the only view.
The morality of virtue enjoins one to cultivate virtue — one’s own virtue. These are certain qualities of character from which certain actions will flow, but it is the character that matters.
The paper is more concerned to argue that the morality of law excludes supererogation (starting from the initial position that the exclusion of supererogation is against our intuitions and requires explaining). It references other work arguing that the morality of virtue may be more welcoming of the concept.
Personally, I find myself more in agreement with the morality of virtue. I will not torture kittens or eat chimpanzees, but I do not much care whether Spain still has bullfights, and I have no qualms about eating meat in general. I am more interested in cultivating my own garden than in whether everyone else has a garden. A mere accumulation of more and more people living much the same lives does not strike me as morally valuable. I value the heights of an unequally distributed civilisation over a uniform mediocrity.
But I have not troubled to build a moral system around these observations of how I live and prefer to live.
I think those who explicitly talk on LW about what we should do mostly do it from an utilitarian perspective but as far as I remember our census results don’t support that everybody is utilitarian.