Thank you for this reply.
I don’t think Luke would disagree with this statement. The point of learning moral psychology, as I understand it, is not to adopt moral psychology as moral philosophy; it’s to understand where moral intuitions come from. Luke doesn’t want philosophers studying intuitionist moral philosophy, as I understand it, because it doesn’t provide an accurate account of how people actually make moral decisions in practice.
Thank you for the clarification.
Where I still take issue is that even if we know, generally speaking, “how people actually make moral decisions in practice”, or “where moral intuitions come from,” that does not add up to what a philosophical study of ethics is supposed to give us, which is more like: what moral decisions people ought to make, or, how people’s moral intuitions ought to be refined (through argumentation, say).
To put it another way, if study of ethics changes the way one makes moral decisions, then the ethically educated would act in an abnormal ethical practice. (If study does not change the way one makes moral decisions, it’s not clear why it would matter at all how people are taught moral philosophy).
My understanding is that there is a standing agreement on LW not to discuss politics; see the Politics is the Mind-Killer sequence.
That is very interesting to know. But I don’t understand your implication. I thought we were talking about a potential revision of the philosophical curriculum. Are you suggesting that mentioning that political theory is part of philosophy is against the ‘agreement on LW’ and so should not be discussed? Or that Luke has chosen not to bring up this aspect of philosophy so as to avoid bringing up politics?
Can you elaborate on what you mean by this? (I am not sure exactly what you mean by “a naturalized cognitivist worldview” or by “transpersonal phenomena.”)
By ‘naturalized cognitivist worldview’ I mean the worldview that holds all the pertinent phenomena to be ‘natural’ in the sense of being discernable by physical sciences, with an emphasis on those phenomena that are part of cognitive systems. Often this comes with the idea that the most pertinent unit of analysis when studying society is the individual cognitive agent or internal processes therein.
I don’t mean anything specific by ‘transpersonal phenomena,’ but I guess I’m trying to broadly indicate phenomena that are not bounded to an individual’s cognitive apparatus. One such phenomena might be Kant’s own idea of trancendental reason. Another could be Taylor’s concept of the social imaginary).
Luke, this is my first comment on LessWrong so forgive me if I’m missing some of the zeitgeist. But I was wondering if you could elaborate on a couple points:
You recommend replacing ethics with moral psychology and decision theory. Hearing that, I’m concerned that replacing ethics with moral psychology would be falling for a naive is/ought fallacy: just because most people’s psychological makeup makes them consider morality in a certain way does not make those moral intuitions correct. And replacing ethics with decision theory would be sidestepping the metaethical question about the legitimacy of consequentialism.
You’ve also left out any political theory from your syllabus. That is disappointing, since one of the roles that philosophy plays when performing at its best is uniting epistemology, ethics, and political philosophy. Plato and Kant, for example, were attempting to do that. How do you see your curriculum weighing in on questions like “What is justice?”
As for my background, I studied cognitive science as an undergraduate with a focus on complexity theory and artificial intelligence, but have also spent a lot of time reading and discussing other philosophy. While I think I understand the thrust of your argument (it’s one I would have made myself when I was an undergrad), I’ve been since convinced of the value of other schools of thought.
I’d argue that, say, continental philosophers are not as sloppy as computer scientists or analytically trained philosophers accuse them of. Rather they have a specialized vocabulary (just like other specialists) for some very difficult but powerful concepts. Often these concepts pertain to social and political life. These concepts aren’t easily reducible to a naturalized cognitivist wordview because they deal with transpersonal phenomena. That doesn’t mean they lack utility though.