The question you’re pointing at is definitely interstinterestinging. A Freudian, slightly pointed way of phrasing it is something like: are human’s deepest desires, in essence, good and altruistic, or violent and selifsh?
My guess is that this question is wrong-headed. For example, I think this is making a mistake of drawing a dichotomy and rivalry between my “oldest and deepest drives” and “reflective reasoning”, and depending on your conception of which of these two wins, your answer to the above questions ends up being positive or negative. I don’t really think those people would endorse that, but I do have a sense that something like this influences their background model of the world, and informs their intuitions about the “essence of human nature” or whatever.
This dichotomy/rivalry seems wrong to me. In my experience, my intuition/drives and my explicit reasoning can very much “talk to each other”. For example, I can actually integrate the knowledge that our minds have evolved such that we are scope insensitive into the whole of my overall reasoning/worldview. Or I can integrate the knowledge that, given I know that I can suffer or be happy, it’s very likely other people can also suffer or feel pleasure, and that does translate into my S1-type drivers. Self-alignment, as I understand it, is very much about having my reflective beliefs and my intuitions inform one another, and I don’ need o through either one overboard to become more self-aligned.
That said, my belief that self-alignment is worth pursuing is definitely based on the belief that this leads people to be more in touch with the Good and more effective in pursuing it. In that belief in turn is mostly informed by my own experience and reports from other people. I acknowledge that that likely doesn’t sound very convincing to someone whose experience points in the exact opposite direction.
The question you’re pointing at is definitely interstinterestinging. A Freudian, slightly pointed way of phrasing it is something like: are human’s deepest desires, in essence, good and altruistic, or violent and selifsh?
My guess is that this question is wrong-headed. For example, I think this is making a mistake of drawing a dichotomy and rivalry between my “oldest and deepest drives” and “reflective reasoning”, and depending on your conception of which of these two wins, your answer to the above questions ends up being positive or negative. I don’t really think those people would endorse that, but I do have a sense that something like this influences their background model of the world, and informs their intuitions about the “essence of human nature” or whatever.
This dichotomy/rivalry seems wrong to me. In my experience, my intuition/drives and my explicit reasoning can very much “talk to each other”. For example, I can actually integrate the knowledge that our minds have evolved such that we are scope insensitive into the whole of my overall reasoning/worldview. Or I can integrate the knowledge that, given I know that I can suffer or be happy, it’s very likely other people can also suffer or feel pleasure, and that does translate into my S1-type drivers. Self-alignment, as I understand it, is very much about having my reflective beliefs and my intuitions inform one another, and I don’ need o through either one overboard to become more self-aligned.
That said, my belief that self-alignment is worth pursuing is definitely based on the belief that this leads people to be more in touch with the Good and more effective in pursuing it. In that belief in turn is mostly informed by my own experience and reports from other people. I acknowledge that that likely doesn’t sound very convincing to someone whose experience points in the exact opposite direction.