DarlBundren wrote: ↑Sat Sep 02, 2017 6:38 pm
According to him, axiology is about what's good, while morality is about how to be good. He states that - hard-core utilitarians aside - we all draw a distinction between axiology and morality.
No, only relativists and deontologists can draw such a distinction, and even most of them won't because they won't necessarily agree on points of axiology; for a relativist at least the claim that one state of the world is any better than another is going to seem subjective or meaningless.
Consequentialists don't and can't draw any such distinction by nature.
Most philosophers agree that consequentialism is the right way of looking at normative ethics. Most
people are simply inconsistent on the topic and don't agree on anything except with moral universalism (without being able to agree on what that is).
He's saying we all draw this distinction, painting a picture of broad consensus, but the reality is he's describing a picture of morality (when he defines it) that amounts to cultural relativism and social contract: virtually nobody agrees with that interpretation. So, if he's appealing to popularity he has to scrap that and go back to normative ethics.
He sounds like somebody who took one too many cultural anthropology classes and had relativism drilled into him, then skipped philosophy.
(EDIT: Apparently he took philosophy, I don't know what compelled him to favor cultural relativism since I've only seen this level of insistence from cultural anthropologists in the past)
DarlBundren wrote: ↑Sat Sep 02, 2017 6:38 pmFor example, axiology says that there's not much difference between murdering someone and not donating money to save a child in Africa.
No, there's quite a bit of difference. In the very least, as a matter of social order, murdering somebody has set off a necessary chain reaction of police work, court proceedings, and punishment that are all very expensive -- enough to save a lot of starving children if the money was better used.
The problem with consequentialism is that most people ignore most of the consequences; that probably goes more for the critics than the practitioners, but practitioners can be at fault too when biases are present. That's why rule consequentialism is probably more useful for most people.
DarlBundren wrote: ↑Sat Sep 02, 2017 6:38 pmMorality, on the other hand, draws a strong distinction: Not-murdering is obligatory; donating is superogatory.
Law draws a distinction, and we need law. Even if it's the right thing to do to murder an evil person before he commits a terrible crime (if you know it will happen), you still have to be punished because there's no way for anybody to determine you acted correctly and preserve social order, and that's part of the consequences.
Scott Alexander wrote:Eating meat doesn’t violate any moral laws either.
It doesn't violate social contract, it doesn't mean that it's not immoral if it's setting off a chain of events that harms sentient beings.
Scott Alexander wrote:Again, it makes the world a worse place.
Something a moral person should care about.
Scott Alexander wrote:But there aren’t any bonds of trust between humans and animals, nobody’s expecting you not to eat meat, there aren’t any written or unwritten codes saying you shouldn’t. So eat the meat and offset it by making the world better in some other way.
Thanks to biases, you should always prefer to abstain from harm rather than attempt to offset that harm after the fact. It is very difficult to precisely offset anything, and the vast majority of people are going to take something like that to mean donate $20 to an animal shelter for the year with no notion of the insignificant effect that has on animal suffering compared to their actions of purchasing meat.
The most precise cancellation of the effect of eating meat would be to stop somebody else from eating it. And in doing that, you're either violating social contract, or convincing the person to stop with an argument. And if you're convincing that person with an argument, and that person has decided as a moral agent to abstain, you're instigating a moral ponzi scheme; claiming credit for that person's moral choices as a copout for your own bad ones. It's an act of existential theft and dishonesty, because that person is doing
nothing moral at all by abstaining from meat if it is enabling you to eat more of it where you otherwise would not have.
Put simply, abstain first from doing harm where you are doing harm to the best of your ability; in the case of meat, this is relatively easy and gives you pretty much the biggest moral bang for your buck of any practicable action. After you have done your best to avoid harm, then look to do even better by doing good and making the world better in other ways.
DarlBundren wrote: ↑Sat Sep 02, 2017 6:38 pmBut he's also quick to point out that this only works outside your vegan community. Vegans, according to him, are more or less turning an axiological stance into a moral one.
True to form for a cultural relativist.
Scott Alexander wrote:Murdering someone does violate a moral law. The problem with murder isn’t just that it creates a world in which one extra person is dead. [...]and the problem isn’t just that it has some knock-on effects in terms of making people afraid of crime, or decreasing the level of social trust by 23.5 social-trustons, or whatever.[...]
No, it's not just whatever. There are profound and immediate costs to yourself and society -- necessary costs to any violation of social contract. Actually account for those and take into account opportunity cost as well, and breaking the law is a very very bad idea for any but the most extreme good consequences.
Scott Alexander wrote:The cost isn’t infinite, but it’s pretty hard to calculate. If we’re positing some ridiculous offset that obviously outweighs any possible cost – maybe go back to the example of curing all cancer forever – then whatever, go ahead. If it’s anything less than that, be careful
That's the point of rule consequentialism. You don't need to muddy the waters with cultural relativism to figure that out.
DarlBundren wrote: ↑Sat Sep 02, 2017 6:38 pmWhat do you think? Do you consider it to be a useful distinction?
You can probably guess by the above, but no. While I love introducing new words and concepts because they usually help with understanding, axiology isn't particularly useful to talk about. It's already subsumed into pretty much any discussion of normative ethics.
DarlBundren wrote: ↑Sat Sep 02, 2017 6:38 pmI have always thought that not pushing the fat man in the trolley problem was just a pragmatical decision. You don't push him because you don't want to live in a society where people can kill you at any moment.This distinction basically tells you the same, but it looks even more practical and systematic. You don't push the man unless it's really, really worth it. (And - maybe - you eat a vegan diet, but you don't throw red paint at people unless there's a lot to gain from it)
That's fine in terms of rule consequentialism, but his meta-ethics are bad, and his claims that eating (or I would say buying) meat is not immoral are bunk.