Well, we’ll start playing on words right now… “shelter” according to freedictionary means “a. Something that provides cover or protection, as from the weather.” If Nazi are observing my home, then it’s no longer a “shelter”, but it becomes a “trap”, in the meaning I was giving to “shelter”.
But the ethical rule is not actually “shelter Jews from Hitler”, but more “protect if you can people who are threatened of something horrible while they didn’t do anything to deserve it”, or something like that. It’s not even explicit in terms of words, I’m not trying to write a legal contract with myself.
And of course I’ll need to evaluate some consequences of my acts in order to chose what to do. I don’t say I don’t use consequentialism at all, just that I don’t use it “raw”. I won’t re-evaluate the consequences of sheltering Jews against Hitler (or anyone pursued by a hateful dictatorship) in terms of risk for myself and of benefit for them when put in front of the choice. Partly because I know that then it’ll be easy to rationalize a reason to not take the risks (“but if I don’t I’ll be able to save more later on” or whatever).
What I was referring to by “amend my ethical rules” is that I do theoretical reasoning about what should be my ethical rules, and doing so I can change them. But that I refuse to do during actual pressure of an actual dilemma, because I don’t trust myself to perform well enough under pressure, I know rationalizing is easy, and I know even that just doing maths under pressure leads to a higher error rate.
Somehow reminds me that article of the French Constitution saying that the Constitution cannot be changed during a war—a clear reference to WW2 and the way Pétain changed the Constitution, but I found it very interesting as a more general guideline : don’t change your most fundamental rules while under heavy pressure.
But we somehow drifted a lot from the initial topic, sorry for the noise ;)
I certainly agree that, given the choice, I’d rather have the opportunity to think carefully about what I ought to do in a situation. But while I’m aware that performing analysis under pressure is error-prone, I’m also aware that applying rules derived from one situation to a different situation without analysis is error-prone. In the real world, it’s sometimes a choice among imperfect options.
Partly because I know that then it’ll be easy to rationalize...But that I refuse to do during actual pressure of an actual dilemma, because I don’t trust myself to perform well enough under pressure
My glasses distort light. A person with perfect vision wouldn’t wear them. They are calibrated to counterbalance my deficiencies.
What is the ideal moral system that someone who didn’t rationalize would use?
Well, we’ll start playing on words right now… “shelter” according to freedictionary means “a. Something that provides cover or protection, as from the weather.” If Nazi are observing my home, then it’s no longer a “shelter”, but it becomes a “trap”, in the meaning I was giving to “shelter”.
But the ethical rule is not actually “shelter Jews from Hitler”, but more “protect if you can people who are threatened of something horrible while they didn’t do anything to deserve it”, or something like that. It’s not even explicit in terms of words, I’m not trying to write a legal contract with myself.
And of course I’ll need to evaluate some consequences of my acts in order to chose what to do. I don’t say I don’t use consequentialism at all, just that I don’t use it “raw”. I won’t re-evaluate the consequences of sheltering Jews against Hitler (or anyone pursued by a hateful dictatorship) in terms of risk for myself and of benefit for them when put in front of the choice. Partly because I know that then it’ll be easy to rationalize a reason to not take the risks (“but if I don’t I’ll be able to save more later on” or whatever).
What I was referring to by “amend my ethical rules” is that I do theoretical reasoning about what should be my ethical rules, and doing so I can change them. But that I refuse to do during actual pressure of an actual dilemma, because I don’t trust myself to perform well enough under pressure, I know rationalizing is easy, and I know even that just doing maths under pressure leads to a higher error rate.
Somehow reminds me that article of the French Constitution saying that the Constitution cannot be changed during a war—a clear reference to WW2 and the way Pétain changed the Constitution, but I found it very interesting as a more general guideline : don’t change your most fundamental rules while under heavy pressure.
But we somehow drifted a lot from the initial topic, sorry for the noise ;)
I certainly agree that, given the choice, I’d rather have the opportunity to think carefully about what I ought to do in a situation. But while I’m aware that performing analysis under pressure is error-prone, I’m also aware that applying rules derived from one situation to a different situation without analysis is error-prone. In the real world, it’s sometimes a choice among imperfect options.
My glasses distort light. A person with perfect vision wouldn’t wear them. They are calibrated to counterbalance my deficiencies.
What is the ideal moral system that someone who didn’t rationalize would use?