Grundprobleme:

  • Me vs. Us x2 != Us vs Them
    • Us vs Them implicates there are no collective interests
    • Is a metamorality really necessairy?
  • Experiments are too abstract and emotions include more than just the given information
  • Manual mode really better than auto?
    • Auto mode survived darwinian competition, why no manual mode
    • Auto mode can be shaped by good culture
  • Problem Deep Pragmatism:
    • Why happieness?
      • Happieness is ambiguous (Rosenqvist)
      • -> Arguments about what max it instead
      • just because manual mode is utilitarian, that does not mean utilitarianism is the best choice
        • many decisions aren’t made in manual mode
      • why not antiutilitarian solutions
        • how are they worse? (p.188)
        • easier to understand, provide a framework
    • Adoption
      • Tribe must abandon its current metamorality (missionary work?)
      • Req: Willingness to solve ToCM

Definitionen

  • Morality:
    • a set of psychological adaptations that allow otherwise selfish individuals to reap the benefits of cooperation
    • -> no moral truth
    • solves ToC (p.26)
    • ultimate goal: spread genes
  • ToCM
    • intertribal conflict, created by conflicting moral values (p.26)
  • Metamorality
    • necessairy moral common ground
  • Deep pragmatism
    • = “best Metamorality”
    • “Maximize happiness impartially” (p.203)
    • Main goal: maximize Happyness
    • How: common currency: shared values
    • Which values: Happyness
    • everyone gets the golden rule (p. 202)
    • Why: Fix ToCM

Moral truth

  • Do moral facts exist? -> moral truth
  • How to prescribe instead of describe morality:
    • religion
      • does god really have a choice? (Plato)
        • If no hes doesn’t make all moral rules
        • If yes how is it moral
      • how to know his will?
        • too many interpretations, impossible to know where to look
    • mathematics: moral facts can be worked out from first principles by calculating the weights of rights
      • proven theorems and axioms
      • Problem: No axioms
    • natural science based on evidence to find moral facts
      • darwinian competition
      • moral truth is found in function
      • what is natural is right

Argument

  1. Metamorality should not be based on moral truths since they either don’t exist or can’t be found out
  2. Metamorality should be based on shared values to form a common ground
  3. This common ground should be based on manual thinking instead of automatic intuitions because they more relieable
  4. Manual thinking should be based on Utilitarianism because it is the most natural thing for it to do and everyone prefers more to less happiness
  5. Utilitarianism is used to maximize the overall amount of happiness (Mill)

Probs

  • 3: How are Intuitions unreliable at tracking moral truths if they can’t be tracked?
  • 4.1: Natural != best (p.187)
  • 4.2: Everyone prefers more to less happiness would be a moral truth, but can’t be accessed
  • 5.1 How to measure happiness, same problem as accessing moral truths
  • 5.2 Different people experience happiness from different sources, how can you know how much happiness they feel
  • 4.3 How does it get applied in quick situations?

Todo

  • Deep pragmatism = particular brand of utilitarianism “maximize happiness imartially”
  • arm instead of camera

Links:

References

  • [1] Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
  • [2] Hardin, Garrett. 1968. The tragedy of the commons. Science 162: 1243–1248.
  • [3] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/prisoner-dilemma/
  • [4] Mill, John Stuart (1861). Utilitarianism.
  • [5] Wielenberg, Erik J. 2014. Review: Greene Joshua, moral tribes: Emotion, reason, and the gap between us and them. Ethics 124 (4): 910–916.
  • [6] Harlow, John Martyn (1868). “Recovery from the Passage of an Iron Bar through the Head”. Publications of the Massachusetts Medical Society.2 (3): 327–47. Reprinted: David Clapp & Son (1869) [scan]
  • [7] Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, London, 1789
  • [8] Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
  • [6] McCloskey, H. J. (1957). An examination of restricted utilitarianism. Philosophical Review 66 (4):466-485.