I have not yet read the sequences in full, let met ask, is there maybe an answer to what is bothering me about ethics: why is basically all ethics in the last 300 years or so universalistic? I.e. prescribing to treat everybody without exception according to the same principles? I don’t understand it because I think altruism is based on reciprocity. If my cousin is starving and a complete stranger is halfway accross the world is starving even more, and I have money for food, most ethics would figure out I should help the stranger. But from my angle, I am obviously getting less reciprocity, less personal utility out of that than out of helping my cousin. I am not even considering the chance of a direct payback, simply the utility of having people I like and associate with not suffer is a utility to me, obviously. Basically you see altruism as an investment, you get a lot back from investing into people close to you, and then with the distance the return on investment is less and less to you, although never completely zero because making humankind as such better off is always better for you. This explains things like that kind of economic nationalism that if free trade makes Chinese workers better off with 100 units and American or European workers worse off with 50, a lot of people still don’t want it, this is actually rational, 100 units to people far away make you better off with 1 unit, 50 units lost to basically your neighbors makes you worse off with 5.
And this is why I don’t understand why most ethics are universalistic?
Of course one could argue this is not ethics when you talk about what is the best investment for yourself. After all with that sort of logic you would get the most return if you never give anything to anyone else, so why even help your cousin?
Anyway, was this sort of reciprocal and thus non-universalistic ethics ever discussed here?
why is basically all ethics in the last 300 years or so universalistic?
Because so much of it comes out of a Christian tradition with a deep presumption of Universalism built into it. But you are not the first person to ask this tradition “What is the value of your values?”.
Your “reciprocal ethics” might be framed as long-term self-interest, or as a form of virtue ethics. It immediately makes me think of Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
There’s a nice discussion on related themes here, or try googling the site for “virtue ethics”.
Hm, I would call it “graded ingroup loyalty”, to quote an Arab saying “me and by brother against my cousin, me and my cousin against the world”. Instead of a binary ingroup and outgroup, other people are gradually more or less your ingroup, spouse more than cousin, cousin more than buddy, buddy more than compatriot, compatriot more than someone really far away.
But note that reciprocity is almost the opposite of loyalty. That kind of tribalism is dysfunctional in the modern world, because:
You can’t necessarily rely on reciprocity in those tribal relationships any more
You can achieve reciprocity in non-tribal relationships
Rather than a static loyalty, it is more interesting to ask how people move into and out of your ingroup? What elicits our feelings of sympathy for some more than others? What kind of institutions encourage us to sympathise with other people and stand in their shoes? What triggers our moral imagination?
I’d tell a story of co-operative trade forcing us to stand in the shoes of other people, to figure out what they want as customers, thus not only allowing co-operation between people with divergent moral viewpoints, but itself giving rise to an ethic of conscientiousness, trustworthiness, and self-discipline. The “bourgeois virtues” out-competing the “warrior ethic.”
I think universalism is an obvious Schelling point. Not just moral philosophers find it appealing, ordinary people do it too (at least when thinking about it in an abstract sense). Consider Rawls’ “veil of ignorance”.
And this is why I don’t understand why most ethics are universalistic?
I think one reason is that as soon as one tries to build ethics from scratch, one is unable to find any justification that sounds like “ethics” for favouring those close to oneself over those more distant. Lacking such a magic pattern of words, they conclude that universalism must be axiomatically true.
In Peter Singer’s view, to fail to save the life of a remote child is exactly as culpable as to starve your own children. His argument consists of presenting the image of a remote child and a near one and challenging the reader to justify treating them unequally. It’s not a subject I particularly keep up on; has anyone made a substantial argument against Singerian ethics?
Anyway, was this sort of reciprocal and thus non-universalistic ethics ever discussed here?
It is often observed here that favouring those close to oneself over those more distant is universally practised. It has not been much argued for though. Here are a couple of arguments.
It is universally practiced and universally approved of, to favour family and friends. It is, for the most part, also approved of to help more distant people in need; but there are very few who demand that people should place them on an equal footing. Therefore, if there is such a thing as Human!ethics or CEV, it must include that.
As we have learned from economics, society in general works better when people look after their own business first and limit their inclination to meddle in other people’s. This applies in the moral area as well as the economic.
Wait, I didn’t even noticed it. That is interesting! So if something to qualify as a philosophy or theory you need to try to build from scratch? I know people who would consider it hubris. Who would say that it is more like, you can amend and customize and improve on things that were handed to you by tradition, but you can never succeed at building from scratch.
So if something to qualify as a philosophy or theory you need to try to build from scratch?
Not necessarily, but that is certainly the currently fashionable approach. Also if you want to convince someone from a different culture, with a different set of assumptions, etc., this is the easiest way to go about doing it.
I am not very optimistic about that happening. I think should write an article about Michael Oakeshott. Basically Oakie was arguing that the cup you are pouring into is never empty. Whatever you tell people they will frame in their previous experiences. So the from-scratch philosophy, the very words, do not mean the same thing to people with different backgrounds. E.g. Hegel’s “Geist” does not exactly mean what “spirit” means in English.
So if something to qualify as a philosophy or theory you need to try to build from scratch?
That’s what philosophers do. Hence such things as Rawls’ “veil of ignorance”, whereby he founds ethics on the question “how would you wish society to be organised, if you did not know which role you would have in it?”
Who would say that it is more like, you can amend and customize and improve on things that were handed to you by tradition, but you can never succeed at building from scratch.
And there are also intellectuals (they tend to be theologians, historians, literary figures, and the like, rather than professional philosophers), who say exactly that. That has the problem of which tradition to follow, especially when the history of all ages is available to us. Shall we reintroduce slavery? Support FGM? Execute atheists? Or shall the moral injunction be “my own tradition, right or wrong”, “jede das seine”?
No, that’s what some philosophers do. You can’t just expel the likes of Michael Oakeshott or Nietzsche from philosophy. Even Rawls claimed at times to be making a political, rather than ethical, argument. The notion that ethics have to be “built from scratch” would be highly controversial in most philosophy departments I’m aware of.
Of all these approaches, only the latest is really worthy of consideration IMHO, different houses, different customs.
One thing is clear, namely that things that are largely extict for any given “we” (say, culture, country, and so on) do not constitute a tradition. The kind of reactionary bullshit like reinventing things from centuries ago and somehow calling it traditionalism merely because they are old should not really be taken seriously. A tradition is something that is alive right now, so for the Western civ, it is largely things like liberal democracy, atheism and light religiosity, anti-racism and less-lethal racism.
The idea here is that the only thing truly realistic is to change what you already have, inherited things have only a certain elasticity, so you can have modified forms of liberal democracy, more or less militant atheism, a bit more serious or even lighter religiosity, a more or less stringent anti-racism and a more or less less-lethal racism. But you cannot really wander far from that sort of set.
This—the reality of only being able to modify things that already exist, and not to create anew, and modify them only to a certain extent—is what I would called a sensible traditionalism, not some kind of reactionary dreams about brining back kings.
is unable to find any justification that sounds like “ethics”
I think that is the issue. “Sounds like ethics” when you go back to Kant, comes from Christian universalism. Aristotle etc. were less universal.
has anyone made a substantial argument against Singerian ethics?
Is Singer even serious? He made the argument that if I find eating humans wrong, I should find eating animals also wrong because they are not very different. I mean, how isn’t it OBVIOUS that would not be an argument against eating animals but an argument for eating humans? Because unethical behavior is the default and ethical is the special case. Take away speciality and it is back to the jungle. To me it is so obvious I hardly even think it needs much discussion… ethics is that thing you do in the special rare cases when you don’t do what you want to do, but what you feel you ought to. Non-special ethics is not ethics, unless you are a saint.
I see no reason to doubt that he means exactly what he says.
I mean, how isn’t it OBVIOUS that would not be an argument against eating animals but an argument for eating humans?
Modus ponens, or modus tollens? White and gold, or blue and black?
Because unethical behavior is the default and ethical is the special case. Take away speciality and it is back to the jungle.
On the whole, we observe that people naturally care for their children, including those who still live in jungles. There is an obvious evolutionary argument that this is not because this has been drummed into them by ethical preaching without which their natural inclination would be to eat them.
To me it is so obvious I hardly even think it needs much discussion...
To be a little Chestertonian, the obvious needs discussion precisely because it is obvious. Also a theme of Socrates. Some things are justifiably obvious: one can clearly see the reasons for a thing being true. For others, “obvious” just means “I’m not even aware I believe this.” As Eliezer put it:
The way a belief feels from inside, is that you seem to be looking straight at reality. When it actually seems that you’re looking at a belief, as such, you are really experiencing a belief about belief.
Most people who are against eating human children would also be against eating human children grown in such a way as to not have brains. Yet clearly, few of the ethical arguments apply to eating human children without brains. So the default isn’t “ethical behavior”, it’s “some arbitrary set of rules that may happen to include ethical behavior at times”.
Of 4: Is there a definition of what counts as ethics? I suppose being universal is part of the definition and then it is defined out. Fine. But the problem is, if Alice or Bob comes and says “Since I am only interested in this sort of thing by definition I am unethical”, this is also not accurate, because it does not really predict what they are. They are not necessarily Randian egotists, they may be the super good people who are very reliable friends and volunteer at local soup kitchens and invest into activism to make their city better and so on, they just change the subject if someone talks about the starvation in Haiti. That is not what “unethical” predicts.
Most people would say that volunteering at a soup kitchen is good, but many would change their mind if they heard that some advantage was being expected in return. And if it isnt, in what way is it reciprocal?
Either I really need to write clearer or you need to read with more attention. Above, “I am not even considering the chance of a direct payback, simply the utility of having people I like and associate with not suffer is a utility to me, obviously.” Making your city better by making sure all of its members are fed is something that makes you better off. It is not a payback or special advantage, but still a return. It makes the place on the whole more functional and safer and having a better vibe. Of course it is not an investment with positive returns, this is why it is still ethics, there is always some sacrifice made. It is always negative return, just not 0 return like “true” altruism. Rather it is like this:
If you have a million utils and invest it into Earth, you get 1 back by making Earth better for you. If you invest it into your country, you get 10 back by making your country better for you. Invest it into your city, you get 1000 back, by making your city better for you. Invest it into your cousin, 10K by making your relatives better for you, your bro, 100K by making your family better for you and so on.
But what would that be objectivily the right way to behave? It seems as if ityou are saying people distant from you are objectively worth less. I think you would need to sell this theory as a compromise between what is right anfpd what is motivating.
Sorry, cannot parse it. My behavior with others does not reflect their objective worth (what is that?) but my goals. Part of my goals may be being virtuous or good, which is called ethics. Or it can be raising the utility of certain people or even all people, but that is also a goal. My behavior with diamonds does not reflect the objective worth of diamonds (do they have any?) but my goals wrt to diamonds. Motivating: yes, that is close to the idea of goals. That is a good approach.
How about this: if you want to work from the angle of objective worth, well, you too do not worth objectively less than others. So basically you want your altruism to be a kind of reciprocal contract: “I have and you not, so I give you, but if it is ever so in the future that you have and I not you should give me too, because I do not worth less than you.”
If that sounds okay, then the next stage could be working from the idea that this is not a clearly formulated, signed contract, but more of a tacit agreement of mutual cooperation if and when the need arises, and then you get you have more of such a tacit agreement with people closer to you.
Maybe that’s what it feels like for you. My altruistic side feeds on my Buddhist ethics: I am just like any other human, so their suffering is not incomprehensible to me, because I have suffered too. I can identify with their aversion to suffering because that’s exactly the same aversion to suffering that I feel. It has nothing to do with exchange or expected gain.
That is interesting that you mention that, because I spent years going to Buddhist meditation centers (of the Lama Ole type) and at some level still identify with it. However I never understood it as a sense of ethical duties or maxims I must exert my will to follow, but rather a set of practices that will put me in a state of bliss and natural compassion where I won’t need to exert wil in this regard, goodness will just naturally flow from me. In this sense I am not even sure Buddhist ethics even exists if we define ethics as something you must force yourself to follow even if you really not feel like doing so. And I have always seen compassion in the B. sense as a form of gain to yourself—reducing the ego by focusing on other people’s problems, thus our own problems will look smaller because we see our own self as something less important. (I don’t practice it much anymore, because I realized if a “religion” is based on reincarnation there is no pressing need to work on it right now, it is not like I can ever be too late for that bus, so you should only work on it if you really feel like doing so. And frankly, these years I feel like being way more “evil” than Ole :) )
I have not yet read the sequences in full, let met ask, is there maybe an answer to what is bothering me about ethics: why is basically all ethics in the last 300 years or so universalistic? I.e. prescribing to treat everybody without exception according to the same principles? I don’t understand it because I think altruism is based on reciprocity. If my cousin is starving and a complete stranger is halfway accross the world is starving even more, and I have money for food, most ethics would figure out I should help the stranger. But from my angle, I am obviously getting less reciprocity, less personal utility out of that than out of helping my cousin. I am not even considering the chance of a direct payback, simply the utility of having people I like and associate with not suffer is a utility to me, obviously. Basically you see altruism as an investment, you get a lot back from investing into people close to you, and then with the distance the return on investment is less and less to you, although never completely zero because making humankind as such better off is always better for you. This explains things like that kind of economic nationalism that if free trade makes Chinese workers better off with 100 units and American or European workers worse off with 50, a lot of people still don’t want it, this is actually rational, 100 units to people far away make you better off with 1 unit, 50 units lost to basically your neighbors makes you worse off with 5.
And this is why I don’t understand why most ethics are universalistic?
Of course one could argue this is not ethics when you talk about what is the best investment for yourself. After all with that sort of logic you would get the most return if you never give anything to anyone else, so why even help your cousin?
Anyway, was this sort of reciprocal and thus non-universalistic ethics ever discussed here?
Because so much of it comes out of a Christian tradition with a deep presumption of Universalism built into it. But you are not the first person to ask this tradition “What is the value of your values?”.
Your “reciprocal ethics” might be framed as long-term self-interest, or as a form of virtue ethics. It immediately makes me think of Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
There’s a nice discussion on related themes here, or try googling the site for “virtue ethics”.
Hm, I would call it “graded ingroup loyalty”, to quote an Arab saying “me and by brother against my cousin, me and my cousin against the world”. Instead of a binary ingroup and outgroup, other people are gradually more or less your ingroup, spouse more than cousin, cousin more than buddy, buddy more than compatriot, compatriot more than someone really far away.
But note that reciprocity is almost the opposite of loyalty. That kind of tribalism is dysfunctional in the modern world, because:
You can’t necessarily rely on reciprocity in those tribal relationships any more
You can achieve reciprocity in non-tribal relationships
Rather than a static loyalty, it is more interesting to ask how people move into and out of your ingroup? What elicits our feelings of sympathy for some more than others? What kind of institutions encourage us to sympathise with other people and stand in their shoes? What triggers our moral imagination?
I’d tell a story of co-operative trade forcing us to stand in the shoes of other people, to figure out what they want as customers, thus not only allowing co-operation between people with divergent moral viewpoints, but itself giving rise to an ethic of conscientiousness, trustworthiness, and self-discipline. The “bourgeois virtues” out-competing the “warrior ethic.”
I think universalism is an obvious Schelling point. Not just moral philosophers find it appealing, ordinary people do it too (at least when thinking about it in an abstract sense). Consider Rawls’ “veil of ignorance”.
I think one reason is that as soon as one tries to build ethics from scratch, one is unable to find any justification that sounds like “ethics” for favouring those close to oneself over those more distant. Lacking such a magic pattern of words, they conclude that universalism must be axiomatically true.
In Peter Singer’s view, to fail to save the life of a remote child is exactly as culpable as to starve your own children. His argument consists of presenting the image of a remote child and a near one and challenging the reader to justify treating them unequally. It’s not a subject I particularly keep up on; has anyone made a substantial argument against Singerian ethics?
It is often observed here that favouring those close to oneself over those more distant is universally practised. It has not been much argued for though. Here are a couple of arguments.
It is universally practiced and universally approved of, to favour family and friends. It is, for the most part, also approved of to help more distant people in need; but there are very few who demand that people should place them on an equal footing. Therefore, if there is such a thing as Human!ethics or CEV, it must include that.
As we have learned from economics, society in general works better when people look after their own business first and limit their inclination to meddle in other people’s. This applies in the moral area as well as the economic.
Wait, I didn’t even noticed it. That is interesting! So if something to qualify as a philosophy or theory you need to try to build from scratch? I know people who would consider it hubris. Who would say that it is more like, you can amend and customize and improve on things that were handed to you by tradition, but you can never succeed at building from scratch.
Not necessarily, but that is certainly the currently fashionable approach. Also if you want to convince someone from a different culture, with a different set of assumptions, etc., this is the easiest way to go about doing it.
I am not very optimistic about that happening. I think should write an article about Michael Oakeshott. Basically Oakie was arguing that the cup you are pouring into is never empty. Whatever you tell people they will frame in their previous experiences. So the from-scratch philosophy, the very words, do not mean the same thing to people with different backgrounds. E.g. Hegel’s “Geist” does not exactly mean what “spirit” means in English.
That’s what philosophers do. Hence such things as Rawls’ “veil of ignorance”, whereby he founds ethics on the question “how would you wish society to be organised, if you did not know which role you would have in it?”
And there are also intellectuals (they tend to be theologians, historians, literary figures, and the like, rather than professional philosophers), who say exactly that. That has the problem of which tradition to follow, especially when the history of all ages is available to us. Shall we reintroduce slavery? Support FGM? Execute atheists? Or shall the moral injunction be “my own tradition, right or wrong”, “jede das seine”?
No, that’s what some philosophers do. You can’t just expel the likes of Michael Oakeshott or Nietzsche from philosophy. Even Rawls claimed at times to be making a political, rather than ethical, argument. The notion that ethics have to be “built from scratch” would be highly controversial in most philosophy departments I’m aware of.
Of all these approaches, only the latest is really worthy of consideration IMHO, different houses, different customs.
One thing is clear, namely that things that are largely extict for any given “we” (say, culture, country, and so on) do not constitute a tradition. The kind of reactionary bullshit like reinventing things from centuries ago and somehow calling it traditionalism merely because they are old should not really be taken seriously. A tradition is something that is alive right now, so for the Western civ, it is largely things like liberal democracy, atheism and light religiosity, anti-racism and less-lethal racism.
The idea here is that the only thing truly realistic is to change what you already have, inherited things have only a certain elasticity, so you can have modified forms of liberal democracy, more or less militant atheism, a bit more serious or even lighter religiosity, a more or less stringent anti-racism and a more or less less-lethal racism. But you cannot really wander far from that sort of set.
This—the reality of only being able to modify things that already exist, and not to create anew, and modify them only to a certain extent—is what I would called a sensible traditionalism, not some kind of reactionary dreams about brining back kings.
I think that is the issue. “Sounds like ethics” when you go back to Kant, comes from Christian universalism. Aristotle etc. were less universal.
Is Singer even serious? He made the argument that if I find eating humans wrong, I should find eating animals also wrong because they are not very different. I mean, how isn’t it OBVIOUS that would not be an argument against eating animals but an argument for eating humans? Because unethical behavior is the default and ethical is the special case. Take away speciality and it is back to the jungle. To me it is so obvious I hardly even think it needs much discussion… ethics is that thing you do in the special rare cases when you don’t do what you want to do, but what you feel you ought to. Non-special ethics is not ethics, unless you are a saint.
I see no reason to doubt that he means exactly what he says.
Modus ponens, or modus tollens? White and gold, or blue and black?
On the whole, we observe that people naturally care for their children, including those who still live in jungles. There is an obvious evolutionary argument that this is not because this has been drummed into them by ethical preaching without which their natural inclination would be to eat them.
To be a little Chestertonian, the obvious needs discussion precisely because it is obvious. Also a theme of Socrates. Some things are justifiably obvious: one can clearly see the reasons for a thing being true. For others, “obvious” just means “I’m not even aware I believe this.” As Eliezer put it:
Most people who are against eating human children would also be against eating human children grown in such a way as to not have brains. Yet clearly, few of the ethical arguments apply to eating human children without brains. So the default isn’t “ethical behavior”, it’s “some arbitrary set of rules that may happen to include ethical behavior at times”.
The Nazi’s and Ayn Rands Egoism were in the last 300 years, so no.
That said, it is now harder to ignore people in far off lands, and easier to help them.
Utilitarianism is popular on LW because, AFAICT, its mathy.
You haven’t explained why you reciprocal ethics should count as ethics at all.
Of 4: Is there a definition of what counts as ethics? I suppose being universal is part of the definition and then it is defined out. Fine. But the problem is, if Alice or Bob comes and says “Since I am only interested in this sort of thing by definition I am unethical”, this is also not accurate, because it does not really predict what they are. They are not necessarily Randian egotists, they may be the super good people who are very reliable friends and volunteer at local soup kitchens and invest into activism to make their city better and so on, they just change the subject if someone talks about the starvation in Haiti. That is not what “unethical” predicts.
I’m talking about reciprocal ethics.
Most people would say that volunteering at a soup kitchen is good, but many would change their mind if they heard that some advantage was being expected in return. And if it isnt, in what way is it reciprocal?
Either I really need to write clearer or you need to read with more attention. Above, “I am not even considering the chance of a direct payback, simply the utility of having people I like and associate with not suffer is a utility to me, obviously.” Making your city better by making sure all of its members are fed is something that makes you better off. It is not a payback or special advantage, but still a return. It makes the place on the whole more functional and safer and having a better vibe. Of course it is not an investment with positive returns, this is why it is still ethics, there is always some sacrifice made. It is always negative return, just not 0 return like “true” altruism. Rather it is like this:
If you have a million utils and invest it into Earth, you get 1 back by making Earth better for you. If you invest it into your country, you get 10 back by making your country better for you. Invest it into your city, you get 1000 back, by making your city better for you. Invest it into your cousin, 10K by making your relatives better for you, your bro, 100K by making your family better for you and so on.
But what would that be objectivily the right way to behave? It seems as if ityou are saying people distant from you are objectively worth less. I think you would need to sell this theory as a compromise between what is right anfpd what is motivating.
Sorry, cannot parse it. My behavior with others does not reflect their objective worth (what is that?) but my goals. Part of my goals may be being virtuous or good, which is called ethics. Or it can be raising the utility of certain people or even all people, but that is also a goal. My behavior with diamonds does not reflect the objective worth of diamonds (do they have any?) but my goals wrt to diamonds. Motivating: yes, that is close to the idea of goals. That is a good approach.
How about this: if you want to work from the angle of objective worth, well, you too do not worth objectively less than others. So basically you want your altruism to be a kind of reciprocal contract: “I have and you not, so I give you, but if it is ever so in the future that you have and I not you should give me too, because I do not worth less than you.”
If that sounds okay, then the next stage could be working from the idea that this is not a clearly formulated, signed contract, but more of a tacit agreement of mutual cooperation if and when the need arises, and then you get you have more of such a tacit agreement with people closer to you.
Maybe that’s what it feels like for you. My altruistic side feeds on my Buddhist ethics: I am just like any other human, so their suffering is not incomprehensible to me, because I have suffered too. I can identify with their aversion to suffering because that’s exactly the same aversion to suffering that I feel. It has nothing to do with exchange or expected gain.
That is interesting that you mention that, because I spent years going to Buddhist meditation centers (of the Lama Ole type) and at some level still identify with it. However I never understood it as a sense of ethical duties or maxims I must exert my will to follow, but rather a set of practices that will put me in a state of bliss and natural compassion where I won’t need to exert wil in this regard, goodness will just naturally flow from me. In this sense I am not even sure Buddhist ethics even exists if we define ethics as something you must force yourself to follow even if you really not feel like doing so. And I have always seen compassion in the B. sense as a form of gain to yourself—reducing the ego by focusing on other people’s problems, thus our own problems will look smaller because we see our own self as something less important. (I don’t practice it much anymore, because I realized if a “religion” is based on reincarnation there is no pressing need to work on it right now, it is not like I can ever be too late for that bus, so you should only work on it if you really feel like doing so. And frankly, these years I feel like being way more “evil” than Ole :) )