Here’s a heuristic: There are no slam-dunks in philosophy.
Here’s another: Most ideas come in strong, contentious flavours and watered-down, easy-to-defend flavours.
But water things down enough and they are no longer philosophy.
The predictable consequence of this sort of statement is that someone starts going off about hospitals and terrorists and organs and moral philosophy and consent and rights and so on. This may be controversial, but I would say that causing this tangent constitutes a failure to communicate the point. Instead of prompting someone to think, you invoked some irrelevant philosophical cruft. The discussion is now about Consequentialism, the Capitalized Moral Theory, instead of the simple idea of thinking through consequences as an everyday heuristic.
But the Capitalized Moral Theory is what “consequentialism” means. You have invented a severely watered down version
“the everyday heuristic”. How could anyone guess that’s what you mean? I wouldn’t have.
Here’s a heuristic: There are no slam-dunks in philosophy.
Here’s another: Most ideas come in strong, contentious flavours and watered-down, easy-to-defend flavours.
But water things down enough and they are no longer philosophy.
But the Capitalized Moral Theory is what “consequentialism” means. You have invented a severely watered down version “the everyday heuristic”. How could anyone guess that’s what you mean? I wouldn’t have.
Agreed except for this:
In my experience the strong flavors are easier to defend, except that they tend to trip people’s absurdity heuristics.