My initial reaction to reading the plan was “Ugh, this guy is going to hold of on revealing which theory is correct until the fourth post and force us to waste time reading a bunch of false theories?! Meh, can’t be bothered, I’ll just skip all of them.”
I’ll be covering four theories. Two of them are generally consistent with the neuroscience and two contradict it. The former are externalist theories of motivation and the latter two are internalist theories of motivation. Externalists claim that beliefs about morality are not sufficient for motivation to act. Internalists claim that they are. This is an important distinction in metaethics.
I could begin with the conclusion and work backwards to support it. “Motivational extrernalism is obviously correct, due to neuroscientific evidence.” Then go on to say what externalism is, that the theories are, and how the neuroscience supports it. Besides leaving out a discussion of internalism, the structure of those posts would be the same the next three posts I have planned. The only other difference (so far as I can see) is the framing effect used. By starting with the conclusion, It seems like I’m cutting to the chase when I’m actually just cutting out some important information about motivational internalism.
And that information is important because some LW-ers are internalists. For my purpose, it’s also necessary to show that these competing theories are inconsistent with the neuroscience. That requires me to explicate the theories in some detail.
Depending on what your interests are, this series of posts may not be for you. If you’re not interested in neuroscience and metaethics, this probably won’t be worth your time. Alternatively, if you are interested, I think reading these posts will be much more efficient then doing all the research I had to do to write these posts.
EDIT: However, if you (or anyone else) has a better way of structuring the information, I’d seriously consider it. By your post getting upvoted, I think I have to be somewhat less confidence that my current approach is optimal.
Oh, ok. I assumed there were one obviously true theory and a bunch of obviously false ones due to that being the case for pretty much every philosophical question.
My initial reaction to reading the plan was “Ugh, this guy is going to hold of on revealing which theory is correct until the fourth post and force us to waste time reading a bunch of false theories?! Meh, can’t be bothered, I’ll just skip all of them.”
You might want to work on that.
I’ll be covering four theories. Two of them are generally consistent with the neuroscience and two contradict it. The former are externalist theories of motivation and the latter two are internalist theories of motivation. Externalists claim that beliefs about morality are not sufficient for motivation to act. Internalists claim that they are. This is an important distinction in metaethics.
I could begin with the conclusion and work backwards to support it. “Motivational extrernalism is obviously correct, due to neuroscientific evidence.” Then go on to say what externalism is, that the theories are, and how the neuroscience supports it. Besides leaving out a discussion of internalism, the structure of those posts would be the same the next three posts I have planned. The only other difference (so far as I can see) is the framing effect used. By starting with the conclusion, It seems like I’m cutting to the chase when I’m actually just cutting out some important information about motivational internalism.
And that information is important because some LW-ers are internalists. For my purpose, it’s also necessary to show that these competing theories are inconsistent with the neuroscience. That requires me to explicate the theories in some detail.
Depending on what your interests are, this series of posts may not be for you. If you’re not interested in neuroscience and metaethics, this probably won’t be worth your time. Alternatively, if you are interested, I think reading these posts will be much more efficient then doing all the research I had to do to write these posts.
EDIT: However, if you (or anyone else) has a better way of structuring the information, I’d seriously consider it. By your post getting upvoted, I think I have to be somewhat less confidence that my current approach is optimal.
Oh, ok. I assumed there were one obviously true theory and a bunch of obviously false ones due to that being the case for pretty much every philosophical question.
As long as we aren’t informed which are false, it’s a good test of our intuitions on these matters. I think it’s worthwhile.