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Notes -
You have to distinguish between the ridiculously-abstract question of what should lie at the base of an ethical system, and the ridiculously-empirical question of what kinds of ethical injunctions people will successfully understand and consistently obey.
There’s no reason that we should have to choose the same answer to both of these questions. Arguing that we should feels to me like arguing that we shouldn’t, say, take the axiom of choice in our system of mathematical logic because the average dude on the street is likely to mis-apply it.
I will further clarify that in both cases, the abstract question of “what should we take at the base of our system?”, divorced from its actual consequences, seems wildly pointless to me. Only what happens when you adopt a rule should matter. Which is, despite everything, what you’re saying above, right?
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