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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   29084 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024

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Do rationalists believe that there are moral commitments that are more rational than others? My assumption would be that rationalists would consider moral commitments to be axioms and therefore a requirement to even discuss morality, and that to be morally rational would be to derive positions from your moral axioms in a consistent way.

Rationalists subscribe to utilitarianism, which in and of itself is incoherent moral philosophy. It has two main problems:

  1. Inability to define utils. Utils are mired with inconsistencies, it is hard to put against each other suffering vs pleasure. Many rationalists evade this as principle of minimizing suffering, but even then there is a problem of comparison: is sand grain in an eye of 1,000 people worse than broken arm of one person?

  2. Time inconsistency of utils. Actions that decrease utils today may increase them tomorrow. Existential comics has a good example for trolley problem in that vein.

To be rational is to rationally extend ones moral principles rationally. Why would it be irrational to behave in line with ones moral principles?

The word "rationally" does a lot of heavy lifting here, as it assumes utilitarianism. Let's say I subscribe to virtue ethics, which says that I cannot commit murder. But then a rationalist comes and says "hey, if you kill Hitler in his crib, you will prevent countless murders in the future". Wrong, this is not going rationally about my moral assumptions, it is assuming completely different moral system.

A bit of a tangent, but I can't really read existential comics anymore after seeing his twitter.

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