That’s an interesting link to Rorty; I’ll have to read it again in some more detail. I really appreciated this quote:
We have come to see that the only lesson of either history or anthropology is our extraordinary malleability. We are coming to think of ourselves as the flexible, protean, self-shaping, animal rather than as the rational animal or the cruel animal.
That really seems to hit it for me. That flexibility, the sense that we can step beyond being warlike, or even calculating, seems to be critical to what morals are all about. I don’t want to make it sound like I’m against a generally moral culture, where happiness is optimized (or some other value I like personally). I just don’t think moral philosophizing would get us there. I’ll have to read up more on the moral sentiments approach. I have read some of Rorty’s papers, but not his major works. I would be interested to see these ideas of his paired with meme theory. Describing moral sentiment as a meme that enters a positive feedback loop where groups that have it survive longer than ones that don’t seems very plausible to me.
I’ll have to think more about your PETA question. I think it goes beyond sympathy. I don’t know how to test the positions though. I don’t think viewing chickens as being equally morally significant would lead to a much better world (for humans—chickens are a different matter). Even with the moral sentiment view, I don’t see how each side could come to a clear resolution.
That’s an interesting link to Rorty; I’ll have to read it again in some more detail. I really appreciated this quote:
That really seems to hit it for me. That flexibility, the sense that we can step beyond being warlike, or even calculating, seems to be critical to what morals are all about. I don’t want to make it sound like I’m against a generally moral culture, where happiness is optimized (or some other value I like personally). I just don’t think moral philosophizing would get us there. I’ll have to read up more on the moral sentiments approach. I have read some of Rorty’s papers, but not his major works. I would be interested to see these ideas of his paired with meme theory. Describing moral sentiment as a meme that enters a positive feedback loop where groups that have it survive longer than ones that don’t seems very plausible to me.
I’ll have to think more about your PETA question. I think it goes beyond sympathy. I don’t know how to test the positions though. I don’t think viewing chickens as being equally morally significant would lead to a much better world (for humans—chickens are a different matter). Even with the moral sentiment view, I don’t see how each side could come to a clear resolution.