I was thinking about what I mean when I say that something is “wrong” in a moral sense. It’s frustrating and a little embarrassing that I don’t immediately have a clear answer to this.
My first thought was that I’m referring to doing something that is socially suboptimal in a utilitarian sense. Something you wouldn’t want to do from behind a veil of ignorance.
But I don’t think that fully captures it. Suppose you catch a cold, go to a coffee shop when you’re pre-symptomatic, and infect someone. I wouldn’t consider that to be wrong. It was unintentional. So I think intent matters. But it doesn’t have to be fully intentional either. Negligence can still be wrong.
So is it “impact + intent”, then? No, I don’t think so. I just bought a $5.25 coffee. I could have donated that money and fed however many starving families. From behind a veil of ignorance, I wouldn’t endorse the purchase. And yet I wouldn’t call it “wrong”.
This thought process has highlighted for me that I’m not quite sure where to draw the boundaries. And I think this is why people talk about “gesturing”. Like, “I’m trying to gesture at this idea”. I’m at a place where I can gesture at what I mean by “wrongness”. I can say that it is in this general area of thingspace, but can’t be more precise. The less precise your boundaries/clouds, the more of a gesture it is, I suppose. I’d like to see a (canonical) post on the topic of gesturing.
The terms right/wrong typically only apply to actions, while good/bad apply to any events.
There is a common distinction between right and merely permissible actions. The buying of coffee is intuitively permissible. While donating the money instead of buying the coffee would be good, it’s (intuitively) not morally required, as this seems like an excessive demand. One of the main criticisms of utilitarianism is that it is an overly demanding theory. It labels actions always as wrong if their consequences are bad.
I was thinking about what I mean when I say that something is “wrong” in a moral sense. It’s frustrating and a little embarrassing that I don’t immediately have a clear answer to this.
My first thought was that I’m referring to doing something that is socially suboptimal in a utilitarian sense. Something you wouldn’t want to do from behind a veil of ignorance.
But I don’t think that fully captures it. Suppose you catch a cold, go to a coffee shop when you’re pre-symptomatic, and infect someone. I wouldn’t consider that to be wrong. It was unintentional. So I think intent matters. But it doesn’t have to be fully intentional either. Negligence can still be wrong.
So is it “impact + intent”, then? No, I don’t think so. I just bought a $5.25 coffee. I could have donated that money and fed however many starving families. From behind a veil of ignorance, I wouldn’t endorse the purchase. And yet I wouldn’t call it “wrong”.
This thought process has highlighted for me that I’m not quite sure where to draw the boundaries. And I think this is why people talk about “gesturing”. Like, “I’m trying to gesture at this idea”. I’m at a place where I can gesture at what I mean by “wrongness”. I can say that it is in this general area of thingspace, but can’t be more precise. The less precise your boundaries/clouds, the more of a gesture it is, I suppose. I’d like to see a (canonical) post on the topic of gesturing.
In these situations I suppose there’s probably wisdom in replacing the symbol with the substance. Ditching the label, talking directly about the properties, talking less about the central node.
Remarks:
The terms right/wrong typically only apply to actions, while good/bad apply to any events.
There is a common distinction between right and merely permissible actions. The buying of coffee is intuitively permissible. While donating the money instead of buying the coffee would be good, it’s (intuitively) not morally required, as this seems like an excessive demand. One of the main criticisms of utilitarianism is that it is an overly demanding theory. It labels actions always as wrong if their consequences are bad.