I think this an excellent scheme for thinking about the issue because it really does help draw together different intuitions onto the same field in a way where we can imagine useful evaluations.
One issue which may create fractures in reasoning is that the alien brain implant is somewhat different than other psychological reactions. At least when I first interpret the mechanism, the brain implant would not attenuate with time. The idea of “thicker skin” is bound up with growing one, allowing our responses to offensiveness attenuate from “my god, how awful” to “whyd do people think that’s funny”.
I think this leads to an important objection: if we could, through photographic salmon exposure* attenuate the pain until it no longer is actually felt, we would object much less to showing salmonitypes to Brits. Indeed, we may perceive that they have a duty to therest of us, even on general utility grounds, to attenuate their impulse.
I don’t think this is an unreasonable objection and it meshes well with our other general moral commands. Children, for example, no doubt are greatly harmed by not getting what they want but we perceive a need for adults not to remain shrill 8 year olds and cultivate some serenity in this regard. (In fact, I had a conversation interrupted just tonight when the table next to mine began making a scene about salad prices, with obvious disutility to the tables around them.)
So I think this is a critical difference which should be addressed as it is not unreasonable to believe, at least from the muted reactions in the first world, that these feelings can attenuate with socialization or small personal effort.
I think this an excellent scheme for thinking about the issue because it really does help draw together different intuitions onto the same field in a way where we can imagine useful evaluations.
One issue which may create fractures in reasoning is that the alien brain implant is somewhat different than other psychological reactions. At least when I first interpret the mechanism, the brain implant would not attenuate with time. The idea of “thicker skin” is bound up with growing one, allowing our responses to offensiveness attenuate from “my god, how awful” to “whyd do people think that’s funny”.
I think this leads to an important objection: if we could, through photographic salmon exposure* attenuate the pain until it no longer is actually felt, we would object much less to showing salmonitypes to Brits. Indeed, we may perceive that they have a duty to therest of us, even on general utility grounds, to attenuate their impulse.
I don’t think this is an unreasonable objection and it meshes well with our other general moral commands. Children, for example, no doubt are greatly harmed by not getting what they want but we perceive a need for adults not to remain shrill 8 year olds and cultivate some serenity in this regard. (In fact, I had a conversation interrupted just tonight when the table next to mine began making a scene about salad prices, with obvious disutility to the tables around them.)
So I think this is a critical difference which should be addressed as it is not unreasonable to believe, at least from the muted reactions in the first world, that these feelings can attenuate with socialization or small personal effort.
*If this is not the name of a band, it should be.