Kicking one dog does not permanently turn your essence into irrevocable dog-kickerhood.
It’s a step on a road. If the step flows from what you are, one step implies the whole path. If you do not want to take the whole path (TDT and Kant advise us) do not take even one step.
Kicking one dog does not permanently turn your essence into irrevocable dog-kickerhood.
Ahem.
So a man walks into a bar, and sits down. He starts a conversation with an old guy next to him. The old guy has obviously had a few. He says to the man:
“You see that dock out there? Built it myself, hand crafted each piece, and it’s the best dock in town! But do they call me “McGregor the dock builder”? No! And you see that bridge over there? I built that, took me two months, through rain, sleet and scorching weather, but do they call me “McGregor the bridge builder”? No! And you see that pier over there, I built that, best pier in the county! But do they call me “McGregor the pier builder”? No!”
The old guy looks around, and makes sure that nobody is listening, and leans to the man, and he says:
I think it’s a case of a lot of things, but fundamental attribution error isn’t one of them.
It’s funny you should mention kicking dogs, as I think animal cruelty (and cruelty in general) is an example of one of the strongest rationales for virtue ethics. I don’t attach a lot of moral weight to dogs, but if I witnessed someone kicking a dog, especially if they thought they weren’t being witnessed, that gives me insight into what sort of person they are. They are displaying characteristics I do not favour.
People would be more inclined to trust and deal with me if I display pro-social characteristics they favour (and don’t display characteristics they disfavour). There are a couple of approaches to me taking advantage of this:
1) I could conspicuously display pro-social characteristics when I believe I’m under scrutiny and it’s not too costly to do so.
2) I could make myself the sort of person who is pro-social and does pro-social things, even when it’s costly or unobserved.
For sure, option 2 is more expensive than option 1, but it has the advantage of being more straightforward to maintain, and when costly opportunities to signal my pro-social virtues come along, I will take them, while those option 1 people will welch out.
If I kick a single dog in private, this erodes the basis of having taken option 2. If anyone sees me kicking a dog in private, this will undermine their trust in me. As such, I should try as much as is reasonably possible to be the sort of person who doesn’t kick dogs.
If a dog runs to your kid, teeth bared, you probably kick it away without having a dilemma; but if pushing a fat man to die saves a bunch of kids, you have to decide to do it?
I mostly have (maybe) dilemmas of the kind ‘if I spend another hour at work, I will finish the task, but not make dinner’ which does have implications for me as a housewife; or (in the past) ‘if I fine this obviously poor flower seller, she might not earn her dinner, but others here will be less inclined to sell Cyclamen kuznetzovii’. (This latter is based on several assumptions, of course.)
This argument works equally well when you replace “kicking dogs” with “playing violent video games” or “being an atheist in a place where you are expected to be a religious believer”. But I would guess that most people here do not see it as a valid reason to stop those things.
I don’t claim that not kicking dogs is a universal moral imperative. I claim that having some internal feature that dissuades you from kicking dogs means I will like and trust you more, and be more inclined to cooperate with you in a variety of social circumstances. This is not because I like dogs, but because that feature probably has some bearing on how you treat humans, and I am a human, and so are all the people I like.
I obviously can’t directly inspect the landscape of your internal features to see if “don’t needlessly hurt things” is in there, but if I see you kicking a dog, I’m going to infer that it’s not.
Again, that can be said of violent video games or atheism. Or to generalize it a bit, it applies to putting conformity above individualism. If I have some internal feature that leads me to do exactly the things you like, you will like and trust me more and be more inclined to cooperate with me. This is true whether those things are “don’t kick dogs”, “don’t play violent video games”, “believe in God”, “be heterosexual”, or “go and kill members of the outgroup”. It doesn’t matter whether God actually exists for this to be true.
It is a property of the way human brains work that a human who kicks dogs in likely to be cruel in other ways. Similar arguments may apply to some of the items on your list although the amount varies by item and many are currently subject to mind-killing debate.
I think we’re talking past each other here. I’m not talking about how to cooperate with anybody, or how to cooperate in a value-hostile social environment. I’m talking about how I can cooperate with people I want to cooperate with.
I’m talking about that too. For slightly different values of “you”, where “you” want to cooperate with fellow religious believers because you think they are more likely to share your desires and values.
Well if we’re talking about that version of “me”, why not talk about the version of “me” who’s a member of the International Dog-Kicking Association? For any given virtue you can posit some social context were that virtue is or is not desirable. I’m not sure what that accomplishes.
The International Dog-Kicking Association is something you just made up, so the fact that a rule fails when applied to it doesn’t mean the rule will cause any problems in real life. Religion actually exists.
Also, on the broader subject of fundamental attribution error, in some cases there are fundamental attributes. If I see someone exhibiting sadistic tendencies (outside of a controlled consensual environment), I don’t care how bad a day they’re having. Unless I can at all avoid it, I don’t want them on my team.
FAE is a complicated issue. It is an error of prediction sure, but not an error of passing moral judgement. It means, if average normal people can do bad things in bad circumstances, if that is the most common case, then being an average normal person is simply not good enough, so we need a secular version of “we are all sinners”.
I should write longer about it. The crux of the issue is that we tend to think being average means you are okay. Because that is literally how our minds work, our moral instincts are based on social approval in some prehistoric tribe, so being a typical tribe member has okay written all over it. That is why we like to think people who do bad have an abnormal “essence”. But if FAE shows it is not so, that most people who look like they did something horrible were driven there under the pressure of uniquely bad circumstances, we have only two choices. We must admit average means bad. Either forgive everybody or damn everybody. Guess what, the second is safer. We have historical experience with a we are all sinners view. It kinda functioned. We don’t have much with a set all the innocent souls in the prisons free type of stuff.
Or we silently forget FAE and go on with ancient common of ritually excommunicating / scapegoating (Rene Girard) people who did bad under the pressure of bad circumstances and pretend they are made of a rotten essence, so that we can salvage our illusion that most people are good and thus would not do bad in bad circumstances. Perhaps this noble lie works best. As this has also a lot of historical testing behind it.
To keep to the dog-kicking example, there are 3 kinds of people:
People who’d never kick a dog in any circumstances.
People who’d normally never kick a dog, but might do it if the dog keeps running in front of their feet when they urgently need to catch a train to get to a job interview that might save them from having to live under a bridge.
People who love kicking dogs and do it anytime they think they can get away with it. Maybe you think that the 2s aren’t good enough, but surely they’re a whole lot better than the 3s (IMO they’re quite close to 1s, much closer than to the 3s). The FAE is what happens when you see a 2 kicking a dog for the first and only time in his life, and you decide he’s a 3.
It is a bit of a deeper issue. Let’s take something truly unacceptable, like rampaging murder. Doesn’t FAE say a normal person can be provoked into it? If yes, the normal person is not good enough.
All the FAE says is that people tend to attribute things to other people’s innate characteristics, when in fact their circumstances may be much more important, but in their own case they explain any bad acts by pointing at the circumstances. It doesn’t say that people don’t have any innate tendencies at all.
Isn’t this a case of fundamental attribution error? Kicking one dog does not permanently turn your essence into irrevocable dog-kickerhood.
It’s a step on a road. If the step flows from what you are, one step implies the whole path. If you do not want to take the whole path (TDT and Kant advise us) do not take even one step.
Ahem.
On moral dilemmas in general:
I think it’s a case of a lot of things, but fundamental attribution error isn’t one of them.
It’s funny you should mention kicking dogs, as I think animal cruelty (and cruelty in general) is an example of one of the strongest rationales for virtue ethics. I don’t attach a lot of moral weight to dogs, but if I witnessed someone kicking a dog, especially if they thought they weren’t being witnessed, that gives me insight into what sort of person they are. They are displaying characteristics I do not favour.
People would be more inclined to trust and deal with me if I display pro-social characteristics they favour (and don’t display characteristics they disfavour). There are a couple of approaches to me taking advantage of this:
1) I could conspicuously display pro-social characteristics when I believe I’m under scrutiny and it’s not too costly to do so.
2) I could make myself the sort of person who is pro-social and does pro-social things, even when it’s costly or unobserved.
For sure, option 2 is more expensive than option 1, but it has the advantage of being more straightforward to maintain, and when costly opportunities to signal my pro-social virtues come along, I will take them, while those option 1 people will welch out.
If I kick a single dog in private, this erodes the basis of having taken option 2. If anyone sees me kicking a dog in private, this will undermine their trust in me. As such, I should try as much as is reasonably possible to be the sort of person who doesn’t kick dogs.
If a dog runs to your kid, teeth bared, you probably kick it away without having a dilemma; but if pushing a fat man to die saves a bunch of kids, you have to decide to do it?
I mostly have (maybe) dilemmas of the kind ‘if I spend another hour at work, I will finish the task, but not make dinner’ which does have implications for me as a housewife; or (in the past) ‘if I fine this obviously poor flower seller, she might not earn her dinner, but others here will be less inclined to sell Cyclamen kuznetzovii’. (This latter is based on several assumptions, of course.)
This argument works equally well when you replace “kicking dogs” with “playing violent video games” or “being an atheist in a place where you are expected to be a religious believer”. But I would guess that most people here do not see it as a valid reason to stop those things.
I don’t claim that not kicking dogs is a universal moral imperative. I claim that having some internal feature that dissuades you from kicking dogs means I will like and trust you more, and be more inclined to cooperate with you in a variety of social circumstances. This is not because I like dogs, but because that feature probably has some bearing on how you treat humans, and I am a human, and so are all the people I like.
I obviously can’t directly inspect the landscape of your internal features to see if “don’t needlessly hurt things” is in there, but if I see you kicking a dog, I’m going to infer that it’s not.
Again, that can be said of violent video games or atheism. Or to generalize it a bit, it applies to putting conformity above individualism. If I have some internal feature that leads me to do exactly the things you like, you will like and trust me more and be more inclined to cooperate with me. This is true whether those things are “don’t kick dogs”, “don’t play violent video games”, “believe in God”, “be heterosexual”, or “go and kill members of the outgroup”. It doesn’t matter whether God actually exists for this to be true.
It is a property of the way human brains work that a human who kicks dogs in likely to be cruel in other ways. Similar arguments may apply to some of the items on your list although the amount varies by item and many are currently subject to mind-killing debate.
I think we’re talking past each other here. I’m not talking about how to cooperate with anybody, or how to cooperate in a value-hostile social environment. I’m talking about how I can cooperate with people I want to cooperate with.
I’m talking about that too. For slightly different values of “you”, where “you” want to cooperate with fellow religious believers because you think they are more likely to share your desires and values.
Well if we’re talking about that version of “me”, why not talk about the version of “me” who’s a member of the International Dog-Kicking Association? For any given virtue you can posit some social context were that virtue is or is not desirable. I’m not sure what that accomplishes.
The International Dog-Kicking Association is something you just made up, so the fact that a rule fails when applied to it doesn’t mean the rule will cause any problems in real life. Religion actually exists.
I really don’t know what we’re actually disagreeing about here, so I’m going to tap out. Have a nice evening.
(If it’s not evening where you are yet, then have a tolerable rest of the day, and then have a nice evening)
Also, on the broader subject of fundamental attribution error, in some cases there are fundamental attributes. If I see someone exhibiting sadistic tendencies (outside of a controlled consensual environment), I don’t care how bad a day they’re having. Unless I can at all avoid it, I don’t want them on my team.
FAE is a complicated issue. It is an error of prediction sure, but not an error of passing moral judgement. It means, if average normal people can do bad things in bad circumstances, if that is the most common case, then being an average normal person is simply not good enough, so we need a secular version of “we are all sinners”.
I should write longer about it. The crux of the issue is that we tend to think being average means you are okay. Because that is literally how our minds work, our moral instincts are based on social approval in some prehistoric tribe, so being a typical tribe member has okay written all over it. That is why we like to think people who do bad have an abnormal “essence”. But if FAE shows it is not so, that most people who look like they did something horrible were driven there under the pressure of uniquely bad circumstances, we have only two choices. We must admit average means bad. Either forgive everybody or damn everybody. Guess what, the second is safer. We have historical experience with a we are all sinners view. It kinda functioned. We don’t have much with a set all the innocent souls in the prisons free type of stuff.
Or we silently forget FAE and go on with ancient common of ritually excommunicating / scapegoating (Rene Girard) people who did bad under the pressure of bad circumstances and pretend they are made of a rotten essence, so that we can salvage our illusion that most people are good and thus would not do bad in bad circumstances. Perhaps this noble lie works best. As this has also a lot of historical testing behind it.
To keep to the dog-kicking example, there are 3 kinds of people:
People who’d never kick a dog in any circumstances.
People who’d normally never kick a dog, but might do it if the dog keeps running in front of their feet when they urgently need to catch a train to get to a job interview that might save them from having to live under a bridge.
People who love kicking dogs and do it anytime they think they can get away with it.
Maybe you think that the 2s aren’t good enough, but surely they’re a whole lot better than the 3s (IMO they’re quite close to 1s, much closer than to the 3s). The FAE is what happens when you see a 2 kicking a dog for the first and only time in his life, and you decide he’s a 3.
It is a bit of a deeper issue. Let’s take something truly unacceptable, like rampaging murder. Doesn’t FAE say a normal person can be provoked into it? If yes, the normal person is not good enough.
All the FAE says is that people tend to attribute things to other people’s innate characteristics, when in fact their circumstances may be much more important, but in their own case they explain any bad acts by pointing at the circumstances. It doesn’t say that people don’t have any innate tendencies at all.
In fact, it’s just as valid to say that the FAE is about our refusal to admit some of our innate tendencies are bad.