I think this is completely off the mark. There have never been low-hanging fruit in morality, you are judging moral issues of the past with a presentist bias, but they were contentious issues in their time. Just like present moral issues are going to be viewed as obvious in the future.
You say any moral theory has to be accepted by rational agents, but what if the people rejecting the theory are not being rational? The theory is still valid regardless of what other people say. Many theories are rejected by their contemporaneous judges, only to be accepted in the future (when the person proposing it has already died).
I also don't think freedom and reason are the only values of importance. Freedom and reason are valued because of something much deeper: they improve the well-being of societies that embrace them. But it's the well-being of agents that morality should attempt to maximize.
Because of all this, the theory of Sam Harris which he explains in The Moral Landscape seems accurate to me.
To me morality is simply the discipline that explores what is good. And it would be a net positive if we could agree on an objective morality based on first principles, but your proposal needs more work.
Thanks for the comment. Id say not torturing babies is pretty low hanging fruit. Creating a detailed property rights regime is much harder. There are things that are wrong to do regardless of what time you happen to be in. Sure, reason depends on facts and circumstances, but not to the point of subjectivism.
The theory doesn’t rely on actual consent, but a hypothetical contract, what “would” people agree to. And I defend the case for that agreement throughout my substack.
Also, welfare isnt a moral value. Its agent-relative and there’s no moral motivation to care about someone else’s welfare. However, free people would care about their own welfare. Welfare is a good as an extension of one’s freedom, but not in and of itself to other parties. But freedom is. You don’t have to care about someone’s wellbeing as if it’s your own, but you should at least value their freedom.
Either torturing babies is good, or it's not, it doesn't depend on people disagreeing with it. You say it's "low-hanging fruit", but at the time many people agreed slavery was moral, doesn't mean it actually was. That's how most people view morality: it doesn't change.
Things that we view as moral today will ultimately be viewed as immoral, that doesn't mean morality will change, it means we are wrong.
Just because you get some people to agree doesn't make something moral.
Also, you are misrepresenting Sam Harris: he doesn't claim avoiding the worst possible misery for everyone is a moral truism, his position is that assuming "the worst possible misery for everyone is bad" is useful. It doesn't matter if our idea of the worst possible misery for everyone changes, it's still useful to consider it bad.
He makes an analogy with medicine. Medicine makes the assumption that being dead is bad. Does it really matter if the definition of "dead" changes? No, medicine should still try to avoid it.
You reliance on "freedom" is also problematic. I commented on your post regarding free will: it doesn't exist. You are trying to maximize something that a) doesn't actually exist b) is very loosely defined c) is subjective d) can easily be faked (as is most of the time, if not the totality of the time). I think that's a very hard sell.
The two statements regarding Sam Harris are equivalent, but let’s look at the implications. According to Harris, since the worst possible misery is bad, giving everyone a lobotomy must be good. Weve move away from the worst possible misery. This is one of the problems with the failure to recognize freedom.
Hypothetical agreements are meaningless. I do not have a hypothetical wife who hypothetically agreed to marry me.
And who decides what "everyone" would agree with? You? People you agree with? Some authority? Everyone currently alive? This is just shuffling the problem.
The fact that you don't see the difference between two statements doesn't mean they are equivalent.
And your lobotomy argument is an obviously nonsensical degree fallacy. According to your argument if two kicks in the nuts is bad, then anything other than that is good, including one kick in the nuts. No, there are *degrees*. One kick in the nuts might be better than two kicks in the nuts, but better doesn't imply good.
If all you care about is reducing pain, then according to Sam Harris, lobotomies to reduce the worst possible suffering are good. It meets his condition of reducing pain.
And I also have a problem with the moral naturalism that Harris adopts, where what is good/bad and what is right/wrong are conflated morally, which makes both statements equivalent from his view.
I make the case for the moral authority of the hypothetical agreement throughout my substack, but you can read some relevant articles here:
I think this is completely off the mark. There have never been low-hanging fruit in morality, you are judging moral issues of the past with a presentist bias, but they were contentious issues in their time. Just like present moral issues are going to be viewed as obvious in the future.
You say any moral theory has to be accepted by rational agents, but what if the people rejecting the theory are not being rational? The theory is still valid regardless of what other people say. Many theories are rejected by their contemporaneous judges, only to be accepted in the future (when the person proposing it has already died).
I also don't think freedom and reason are the only values of importance. Freedom and reason are valued because of something much deeper: they improve the well-being of societies that embrace them. But it's the well-being of agents that morality should attempt to maximize.
Because of all this, the theory of Sam Harris which he explains in The Moral Landscape seems accurate to me.
To me morality is simply the discipline that explores what is good. And it would be a net positive if we could agree on an objective morality based on first principles, but your proposal needs more work.
Thanks for the comment. Id say not torturing babies is pretty low hanging fruit. Creating a detailed property rights regime is much harder. There are things that are wrong to do regardless of what time you happen to be in. Sure, reason depends on facts and circumstances, but not to the point of subjectivism.
The theory doesn’t rely on actual consent, but a hypothetical contract, what “would” people agree to. And I defend the case for that agreement throughout my substack.
Also, welfare isnt a moral value. Its agent-relative and there’s no moral motivation to care about someone else’s welfare. However, free people would care about their own welfare. Welfare is a good as an extension of one’s freedom, but not in and of itself to other parties. But freedom is. You don’t have to care about someone’s wellbeing as if it’s your own, but you should at least value their freedom.
I’ll discuss this more in my next article. But I discuss why freedom takes moral priority over welfare, and what’s wrong with Sam’s realism here, https://open.substack.com/pub/neonomos/p/freedom-vs-utility?r=1pded0&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Either torturing babies is good, or it's not, it doesn't depend on people disagreeing with it. You say it's "low-hanging fruit", but at the time many people agreed slavery was moral, doesn't mean it actually was. That's how most people view morality: it doesn't change.
Things that we view as moral today will ultimately be viewed as immoral, that doesn't mean morality will change, it means we are wrong.
Just because you get some people to agree doesn't make something moral.
Also, you are misrepresenting Sam Harris: he doesn't claim avoiding the worst possible misery for everyone is a moral truism, his position is that assuming "the worst possible misery for everyone is bad" is useful. It doesn't matter if our idea of the worst possible misery for everyone changes, it's still useful to consider it bad.
He makes an analogy with medicine. Medicine makes the assumption that being dead is bad. Does it really matter if the definition of "dead" changes? No, medicine should still try to avoid it.
You reliance on "freedom" is also problematic. I commented on your post regarding free will: it doesn't exist. You are trying to maximize something that a) doesn't actually exist b) is very loosely defined c) is subjective d) can easily be faked (as is most of the time, if not the totality of the time). I think that's a very hard sell.
Again, it doesn’t depend on actual agreement, it would be a hypothetical agreement. And everyone would agree that torturing babies is wrong in that agreement. See here https://open.substack.com/pub/neonomos/p/the-social-contract-part-1-why-is?r=1pded0&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
The two statements regarding Sam Harris are equivalent, but let’s look at the implications. According to Harris, since the worst possible misery is bad, giving everyone a lobotomy must be good. Weve move away from the worst possible misery. This is one of the problems with the failure to recognize freedom.
Hypothetical agreements are meaningless. I do not have a hypothetical wife who hypothetically agreed to marry me.
And who decides what "everyone" would agree with? You? People you agree with? Some authority? Everyone currently alive? This is just shuffling the problem.
The fact that you don't see the difference between two statements doesn't mean they are equivalent.
And your lobotomy argument is an obviously nonsensical degree fallacy. According to your argument if two kicks in the nuts is bad, then anything other than that is good, including one kick in the nuts. No, there are *degrees*. One kick in the nuts might be better than two kicks in the nuts, but better doesn't imply good.
If all you care about is reducing pain, then according to Sam Harris, lobotomies to reduce the worst possible suffering are good. It meets his condition of reducing pain.
And I also have a problem with the moral naturalism that Harris adopts, where what is good/bad and what is right/wrong are conflated morally, which makes both statements equivalent from his view.
I make the case for the moral authority of the hypothetical agreement throughout my substack, but you can read some relevant articles here:
https://neonomos.substack.com/p/the-social-contract-part-1-why-is
https://neonomos.substack.com/p/the-social-contract-part-3-in-defense
https://neonomos.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-hypothetical-consent