Now you get it! That was one of the shorter paths to enlightenment I’ve seen.
Sadly, just because it’s a non-objective set of personal and societal beliefs, does NOT mean we can easily decide otherwise. There’s something like momentum in human cognition that makes changes of this sort very slow. These things are very sticky, and often only change significantly by individual replacement over generations, not considered decisions within individuals (though there’s some of that, too, especially in youth).
In addition to the stickiness of institutional beliefs, I would add that individually agents cannot decide against their own objective functions (except merely verbally). In the case of humans, we cannot decide what qualities our phenomenal experience will have; it is a fact of the matter rather than an opinion that suffering is undesirable for oneself, etc.. One can verbally pronounce that “I don’t care about my suffering”, but the phenomenal experience of badness will in fact remain.
Yes, it is not a ‘reductio ad absurdum’ in general, you are right. But it is one in the specific case of agents (like ourselves). I cannot decide that my suffering is not undesirable to me, and so I am limited to a normative frame of reference in at least this case.
I don’t think it’s wrong to ‘reason within’ that “normative frame of reference” but I think the point was that we can’t expect all other possible minds to reason in a similar way, even just from their own similar ‘frame of reference’.
I don’t think it’s wrong to also (always) consider things from our own frame of reference tho.
Your attitude extends far past morality, and dissolves all problems in general because we can decide that something isn’t a problem.
Now you get it! That was one of the shorter paths to enlightenment I’ve seen.
Sadly, just because it’s a non-objective set of personal and societal beliefs, does NOT mean we can easily decide otherwise. There’s something like momentum in human cognition that makes changes of this sort very slow. These things are very sticky, and often only change significantly by individual replacement over generations, not considered decisions within individuals (though there’s some of that, too, especially in youth).
In addition to the stickiness of institutional beliefs, I would add that individually agents cannot decide against their own objective functions (except merely verbally). In the case of humans, we cannot decide what qualities our phenomenal experience will have; it is a fact of the matter rather than an opinion that suffering is undesirable for oneself, etc.. One can verbally pronounce that “I don’t care about my suffering”, but the phenomenal experience of badness will in fact remain.
That seems true, but not also a ‘reductio ad absurdum’ either.
‘Problem’ seems like an inherently moral idea/frame.
Yes, it is not a ‘reductio ad absurdum’ in general, you are right. But it is one in the specific case of agents (like ourselves). I cannot decide that my suffering is not undesirable to me, and so I am limited to a normative frame of reference in at least this case.
I don’t think it’s wrong to ‘reason within’ that “normative frame of reference” but I think the point was that we can’t expect all other possible minds to reason in a similar way, even just from their own similar ‘frame of reference’.
I don’t think it’s wrong to also (always) consider things from our own frame of reference tho.