For example, most people would think that needlessly hurting somebody else is wrong, just because. The claim doesn’t need further elaboration, and in fact the reasons for it can’t be explained, though people can and do construct elaborate rationalizations for why everyone should accept the claim.
I think this is a folk theory about how “moral intuitions” work, and I don’t think that it is true, in the sense that it is a naive answer to a naive question that should have been dissolved rather than answered. For example, most people think everything “just because”, and further elaboration is just confabulation unless you do something unusual.
Thinking that morality is a specialized domain (a separate magisterium?) leads to the idea of “debating morality” as though the actual real communication events that acquire that label are like other debates except about the specialized domain: engaged in for similar purposes, with similar actual end points, resolved according to similar rhetorical patterns, and so on. Compare and contrast variations on the terms: “ethical debates”, “political debates”, “scientific debates”, “morality conversations”, “morality dialogues”, “political dialogues”, etc. Imagine the halo of all such terms, and the wider halo of all communication events that match anything in the halo of terms, and then imagine running a clustering algorithm on those communication events to see if they are even distinct things, and if so what the real differences are.
I don’t want to say “Boo!” here too much. I’m friendly to the essay. And given your starting assumptions it does pretty much lead to the open minded interpretation of moral debates you derived. I tend to like people who go a little bit meta on those communication events more then people who just participate in them by blind reflex, but I think that going meta on those communication events a lot (with tape recorders and statistics and hypothesis testing and a research budget and so on) would reveal a lot of really useful theory. You linked to Haidt… some of this research is being done. I suspect more would be worthwhile :-)
Edited to add: And I bet the researcher’s “moral debating” performance and moral conclusions would themselves be very interesting objects of study. Imagine being a fly on the wall while Haidt, Drescher, and Lakoff tried to genuinely aumann updated on political issues of the day.
I think this is a folk theory about how “moral intuitions” work, and I don’t think that it is true, in the sense that it is a naive answer to a naive question that should have been dissolved rather than answered
I’m not entirely sure what you mean, or perhaps you use “dissolving” in a different sense from how I understand it. I thought that dissolving a question meant taking a previously mysterious and unanswerable question and providing such an explanation that there’s no longer any question to be asked. But if there is a mysterious and unanswerable question here, I’m not sure of what it is.
For what it’s worth, I’d bet that your third question will be answered more or less directly, without dissolution. See Wix’s reply for a step in that direction.
Still not sure what you mean: questions one and two seem interesting but outside the scope of my essay, and I’m not sure I understand the third one. You said in your original comment that
I think this is a folk theory about how “moral intuitions” work, and I don’t think that it is true, in the sense that it is a naive answer to a naive question that should have been dissolved rather than answered.
...but I don’t think I really answered any of those three questions in my post.
To be fair, this post does point out a reason why debating morality is different from debating most other subjects (using different words from mine): people have very different priors on morality, and unlike in, say, physics, these priors can’t be rebutted by observing the universe. Reaching an agreement in morality is therefore often much harder than in other subjects, if an agreement even can be reached.
I think this is a folk theory about how “moral intuitions” work, and I don’t think that it is true, in the sense that it is a naive answer to a naive question that should have been dissolved rather than answered. For example, most people think everything “just because”, and further elaboration is just confabulation unless you do something unusual.
Thinking that morality is a specialized domain (a separate magisterium?) leads to the idea of “debating morality” as though the actual real communication events that acquire that label are like other debates except about the specialized domain: engaged in for similar purposes, with similar actual end points, resolved according to similar rhetorical patterns, and so on. Compare and contrast variations on the terms: “ethical debates”, “political debates”, “scientific debates”, “morality conversations”, “morality dialogues”, “political dialogues”, etc. Imagine the halo of all such terms, and the wider halo of all communication events that match anything in the halo of terms, and then imagine running a clustering algorithm on those communication events to see if they are even distinct things, and if so what the real differences are.
I don’t want to say “Boo!” here too much. I’m friendly to the essay. And given your starting assumptions it does pretty much lead to the open minded interpretation of moral debates you derived. I tend to like people who go a little bit meta on those communication events more then people who just participate in them by blind reflex, but I think that going meta on those communication events a lot (with tape recorders and statistics and hypothesis testing and a research budget and so on) would reveal a lot of really useful theory. You linked to Haidt… some of this research is being done. I suspect more would be worthwhile :-)
Edited to add: And I bet the researcher’s “moral debating” performance and moral conclusions would themselves be very interesting objects of study. Imagine being a fly on the wall while Haidt, Drescher, and Lakoff tried to genuinely aumann updated on political issues of the day.
I’m not entirely sure what you mean, or perhaps you use “dissolving” in a different sense from how I understand it. I thought that dissolving a question meant taking a previously mysterious and unanswerable question and providing such an explanation that there’s no longer any question to be asked. But if there is a mysterious and unanswerable question here, I’m not sure of what it is.
Potential questions this essay could have been written to answer, that might deserve to be dissolved rather than answered directly:
How does moral reasoning work (and what are the implications)?
How do moral debates find ground in moral feelings (and what are the implications)?
Where does the motivational force attributed to pro-social intrinsic values come from (and what are the implications)?
I’m currently reading a book called Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality that frames the problem exactly like that. It’s by Patricia Churchland. The view that she defends is that moral decision are based on constraint satisfaction, just like a lot of other decisions processes.
For what it’s worth, I’d bet that your third question will be answered more or less directly, without dissolution. See Wix’s reply for a step in that direction.
You’re probably right. In some sense I just re-stated the same question a few times, dissolving more at each step :-)
Still not sure what you mean: questions one and two seem interesting but outside the scope of my essay, and I’m not sure I understand the third one. You said in your original comment that
...but I don’t think I really answered any of those three questions in my post.
To be fair, this post does point out a reason why debating morality is different from debating most other subjects (using different words from mine): people have very different priors on morality, and unlike in, say, physics, these priors can’t be rebutted by observing the universe. Reaching an agreement in morality is therefore often much harder than in other subjects, if an agreement even can be reached.