Murder is just a word.
…
SBF bites all the bullets, all the time, as we see throughout. Murder is bad because look at all the investments and productivity that would be lost, and the distress particular people might feel
You are saying this as if you disagreed with it. In this case, I’d like to vehemently disagree with your disagreeing with Sam.
Murder really is bad because of all the bad things that follow from it, not because there is some moral category of “murder”, which is always bad. This isn’t just “Sam biting all the bullets”, this is basic utilitarianism 101, something that I wouldn’t even call a bullet. The elegance of this argument and arguments like it is the reason people like utilitarianism, myself included.
Believing this has, in my opinion, morally good consequences. It explains why murdering a random person is bad, but very importantly does not explain why murdering a tyrant is bad, or why abortion is bad. Deontology very easily fails those tests, unless you’re including a lot of moral “epicycles”.
. The elegance of this argument and arguments like it is the reason people like utilitarianism, myself included.
Excessive bullet biting for the pursuit of elegance is a road to moral ruin. Human value is complex. To be a consistent agent in Deontology, Virtue Ethics, or Utilitarianism, you necessarily have to (at minimum) toss out the other two. But morally, we actually DO value aspects of all 3 - we really DO think it’s bad to murder someone outside of the consequences of doing so, and it feels like adding epicycles to justify that moral intuition with reasons when there is indeed a deontological core to some of our moral intuitions. Of course, there’s also a core of utilitarianism and virtue ethics that would all suggest not murdering—but throwing out things you actually value in terms of your moral intuitions in the name of elegance is bad, actually.
This is more a tangent than a direct response—I think I fundamentally agree with almost everything you wrote—but I dont think virtue ethics requires tossing out the other two (although I agree both of the others require tossing out each other).
I view virtue ethics as saying, roughly, “the actually important thing almost always is not how you act in contrived edge case thought experiments, but rather how how habitually act in day to day circumstances. Thus you should worry less, probably much much less, about said thought experiments, and worry more about virtuous behavior in all the circumstances where deontology and utilitarianism have no major conflicts”. I take it as making a claim about correct use of time and thought-energy, rather than about perfectly correct morality. It thus can extend to ”...and we think (D/U) ethics are ultimately best served this way, and please use (D/U) ethics if one of those corner cases ever shows up” for either deontology or (several versions of) utilitarianism, basically smoothly.
I think virtue ethics is a practical solution, but if you just say “if corner cases show up, don’t follow it” means you’re doing something else other than being a virtue ethicist.
You are saying this as if you disagreed with it. In this case, I’d like to vehemently disagree with your disagreeing with Sam.
Murder really is bad because of all the bad things that follow from it, not because there is some moral category of “murder”, which is always bad. This isn’t just “Sam biting all the bullets”, this is basic utilitarianism 101, something that I wouldn’t even call a bullet. The elegance of this argument and arguments like it is the reason people like utilitarianism, myself included.
Believing this has, in my opinion, morally good consequences. It explains why murdering a random person is bad, but very importantly does not explain why murdering a tyrant is bad, or why abortion is bad. Deontology very easily fails those tests, unless you’re including a lot of moral “epicycles”.
Excessive bullet biting for the pursuit of elegance is a road to moral ruin. Human value is complex. To be a consistent agent in Deontology, Virtue Ethics, or Utilitarianism, you necessarily have to (at minimum) toss out the other two. But morally, we actually DO value aspects of all 3 - we really DO think it’s bad to murder someone outside of the consequences of doing so, and it feels like adding epicycles to justify that moral intuition with reasons when there is indeed a deontological core to some of our moral intuitions. Of course, there’s also a core of utilitarianism and virtue ethics that would all suggest not murdering—but throwing out things you actually value in terms of your moral intuitions in the name of elegance is bad, actually.
This is more a tangent than a direct response—I think I fundamentally agree with almost everything you wrote—but I dont think virtue ethics requires tossing out the other two (although I agree both of the others require tossing out each other).
I view virtue ethics as saying, roughly, “the actually important thing almost always is not how you act in contrived edge case thought experiments, but rather how how habitually act in day to day circumstances. Thus you should worry less, probably much much less, about said thought experiments, and worry more about virtuous behavior in all the circumstances where deontology and utilitarianism have no major conflicts”. I take it as making a claim about correct use of time and thought-energy, rather than about perfectly correct morality. It thus can extend to ”...and we think (D/U) ethics are ultimately best served this way, and please use (D/U) ethics if one of those corner cases ever shows up” for either deontology or (several versions of) utilitarianism, basically smoothly.
I think virtue ethics is a practical solution, but if you just say “if corner cases show up, don’t follow it” means you’re doing something else other than being a virtue ethicist.