Where you see neutrality, he would see obligation.
In what sense is it an obligation? By what mechanism am I obligated? Do I get punished for not living up to it?
You use that word, but the only meaningful source of that obligation, as I see it, is the desire to be a good person. Good, not neutral.
I disagree, and I think that you are more of a relativist than you are letting on. Ethics should be able to teach us things that we didn’t already know, perhaps even things that we didn’t want to acknowledge.
This is a point of divergence, and I find that what ethical systems “teach us” is an area full of skulls. (However, I am, in fact, far LESS of a relativist than I am letting on; I am in fact a variant of absolutist.)
As for someone who murders fewer people than he saves, such a person would be superior to me (who saves nobody and kills nobody) and inferior to someone who saves many and kills nobody.
Question: Would a version of yourself who did not believe in your ethics, and saw “neutral” as a perfectly valid thing to be, be happier than the version of yourself that exists?
Some moral theories have zero “slack”: everything that is not mandatory (morally good) is forbidden (morally evil). It seems that yours is not one of them, but they do exist.
I suppose that people who adhere to them think that any other system is morally repugnant, and they can have that opinion if they want, but it seems completely impractical and downright counterproductive even if there was some absolute standard by which they could be said to be “correct”.
One way of understanding these “zero slack” theories is not that they approve/condemn things as morally good vs morally evil, but rather that they provide a single ordering of actions from best to worst. There is no negative (evil) half of the spectrum. Some things are just worse than others, and you should aspire to the best that you can, an idea which I don’t think is counterproductive at all.
You use that word, but the only meaningful source of that obligation, as I see it, is the desire to be a good person.
Yes, but then it sounds like those who have no such altruistic desire are equally justified as those who do. An alternative view of obligation, one which works very well with utilitarianism, is to reject personal identity as a psychological illusion. In that case there is no special difference between “my” suffering and “your” suffering, and my desire to minimize one of these rationally requires me to minimize the other. Many pantheists take such a view of ethics, and I believe its quasi-official name is “open individualism”.
This is a point of divergence, and I find that what ethical systems “teach us” is an area full of skulls.
You would prefer that we had the ethical intuitions and views of the first human beings, or perhaps of their hominid ancestors?
Yes, but then it sounds like those who have no such altruistic desire are equally justified as those who do. An alternative view of obligation, one which works very well with utilitarianism, is to reject personal identity as a psychological illusion. In that case there is no special difference between “my” suffering and “your” suffering, and my desire to minimize one of these rationally requires me to minimize the other. Many pantheists take such a view of ethics, and I believe its quasi-official name is “open individualism”.
I think this requires an assumption that there exists on obligation to end our own suffering; I find that a curious notion, because it presupposes that there is only one valid way to exist.
You would prefer that we had the ethical intuitions and views of the first human beings, or perhaps of their hominid ancestors?
What bearing do their ethical intuitions have on me?
(What bearing do my ethical intuitions have on future hominids?)
I think this requires an assumption that there exists on obligation to end our own suffering
The obligation in this theory is conditional on you wanting to end your own suffering. If you don’t care about your own suffering, then you have no reason to care about the suffering of others. However, if you do care, then you must also care about the suffering of others.
In what sense is it an obligation? By what mechanism am I obligated? Do I get punished for not living up to it?
You use that word, but the only meaningful source of that obligation, as I see it, is the desire to be a good person. Good, not neutral.
This is a point of divergence, and I find that what ethical systems “teach us” is an area full of skulls. (However, I am, in fact, far LESS of a relativist than I am letting on; I am in fact a variant of absolutist.)
Question: Would a version of yourself who did not believe in your ethics, and saw “neutral” as a perfectly valid thing to be, be happier than the version of yourself that exists?
Some moral theories have zero “slack”: everything that is not mandatory (morally good) is forbidden (morally evil). It seems that yours is not one of them, but they do exist.
I suppose that people who adhere to them think that any other system is morally repugnant, and they can have that opinion if they want, but it seems completely impractical and downright counterproductive even if there was some absolute standard by which they could be said to be “correct”.
One way of understanding these “zero slack” theories is not that they approve/condemn things as morally good vs morally evil, but rather that they provide a single ordering of actions from best to worst. There is no negative (evil) half of the spectrum. Some things are just worse than others, and you should aspire to the best that you can, an idea which I don’t think is counterproductive at all.
Yes, but then it sounds like those who have no such altruistic desire are equally justified as those who do. An alternative view of obligation, one which works very well with utilitarianism, is to reject personal identity as a psychological illusion. In that case there is no special difference between “my” suffering and “your” suffering, and my desire to minimize one of these rationally requires me to minimize the other. Many pantheists take such a view of ethics, and I believe its quasi-official name is “open individualism”.
You would prefer that we had the ethical intuitions and views of the first human beings, or perhaps of their hominid ancestors?
Yes.
I think this requires an assumption that there exists on obligation to end our own suffering; I find that a curious notion, because it presupposes that there is only one valid way to exist.
What bearing do their ethical intuitions have on me?
(What bearing do my ethical intuitions have on future hominids?)
The obligation in this theory is conditional on you wanting to end your own suffering. If you don’t care about your own suffering, then you have no reason to care about the suffering of others. However, if you do care, then you must also care about the suffering of others.