The concept of bias seems to be central to the concept of morality. Philosophers often say the moral action is simply the action you have the best reasons to do. But we do not usually treat immorally-acting people as if they had made a random analysis error. We instead treat them as if they were enemies, acting against us on purpose. And our explanation is usually that they are biased.
Riddle me this: What do societies gain by hammering on those nail heads that stick out?
Whether tacit or express, the rules of conduct in a society exist for a reason. My guess is that it conserves societal wealth by prevents factionalization / splitting up of societies, which then makes everyone involved less likely to survive.
If factionalization threatens society, then we would react harshly when rules are broken. But then why are some infractions treated differently than others?
Regardless, History shows that the rules of conduct change over time, so if you find reactions unconscionable, you have to choose between trying to change society and trying to change yourself.
Patrick, we do have some ability to predict future trends in moral views. Consider support for gay rights: in addition to being the overwhelming consensus of elites, it is also predominant among the younger generations, so that one can reasonably expect it to become as pervasive as opposition to racial segregation within one's lifetime. The stock of moral opinion reflects a legacy population anchored to old beliefs developed without contact with openly gay people, but the flow is clearly in favor of equal treatment. In such a case, do you try to behave in a way that will not disturb your neighbours today, or your neighbours in 2020?
If there is a consensus among these philosophes, it's oversimplified in its assumptions about the transmission of cultural knowledge across generations. They give no account of human nature. Singer is the worst of the bunch, since he assumes our morality is something close to a blank slate waiting to be filled in by vile tradition. I find Rawls's comment interesting because I believe there are empirical ways of testing its credibility. Can we prune our way to the truth by discarding weak intuitions? Not just in morality, but in other domains? Now Rawls doesn't make any comments about the human nature underlying morality. To be sure, he offers the language analogy that Marc Hauser and othes have dilated upon. Still, why should we trust ourselves? There's no reason to believe we might not be innately biased in some way to have strong intuitions about some moral cases and weak intuitions about others. Jonathan Haidt's work might be relevant here.
Essentially, my argument is that if you take today's moral measuring stick, there are lots of people who are bad. If you take another century's or culture's measuring stick, those same people might not be "bad". There is a bias in assuming today's moral measuring stick is the one true measuring stick.
Since we cannot say that there is a Universal Moral Measuring Stick, then I say our optimal policy is ensure that we can sleep peacefully at night by not giving our neighbors a reason to disturb us and by not acting in a way so as to disturb our conscience (sometimes those may be mutually exclusive and then you live in times that try people's souls).
Patrick, Robin's right, the Singer quote explicitly states that the sort of intuitionist judgments one might use to justify actions so as to sleep at night are likely derived from "discarded" sources or motivations and therefore replete with bias.
Whatever one does will likely be viewed by someone else at some time in the history of intelligences as completely and utterly immoral. There's simply no need to concern oneself with fads, just as long as you can sleep peacefully.
Riddle me this: What do societies gain by hammering on those nail heads that stick out?
Whether tacit or express, the rules of conduct in a society exist for a reason. My guess is that it conserves societal wealth by prevents factionalization / splitting up of societies, which then makes everyone involved less likely to survive.
If factionalization threatens society, then we would react harshly when rules are broken. But then why are some infractions treated differently than others?
Regardless, History shows that the rules of conduct change over time, so if you find reactions unconscionable, you have to choose between trying to change society and trying to change yourself.
Patrick, we do have some ability to predict future trends in moral views. Consider support for gay rights: in addition to being the overwhelming consensus of elites, it is also predominant among the younger generations, so that one can reasonably expect it to become as pervasive as opposition to racial segregation within one's lifetime. The stock of moral opinion reflects a legacy population anchored to old beliefs developed without contact with openly gay people, but the flow is clearly in favor of equal treatment. In such a case, do you try to behave in a way that will not disturb your neighbours today, or your neighbours in 2020?
If there is a consensus among these philosophes, it's oversimplified in its assumptions about the transmission of cultural knowledge across generations. They give no account of human nature. Singer is the worst of the bunch, since he assumes our morality is something close to a blank slate waiting to be filled in by vile tradition. I find Rawls's comment interesting because I believe there are empirical ways of testing its credibility. Can we prune our way to the truth by discarding weak intuitions? Not just in morality, but in other domains? Now Rawls doesn't make any comments about the human nature underlying morality. To be sure, he offers the language analogy that Marc Hauser and othes have dilated upon. Still, why should we trust ourselves? There's no reason to believe we might not be innately biased in some way to have strong intuitions about some moral cases and weak intuitions about others. Jonathan Haidt's work might be relevant here.
Essentially, my argument is that if you take today's moral measuring stick, there are lots of people who are bad. If you take another century's or culture's measuring stick, those same people might not be "bad". There is a bias in assuming today's moral measuring stick is the one true measuring stick.
Since we cannot say that there is a Universal Moral Measuring Stick, then I say our optimal policy is ensure that we can sleep peacefully at night by not giving our neighbors a reason to disturb us and by not acting in a way so as to disturb our conscience (sometimes those may be mutually exclusive and then you live in times that try people's souls).
Patrick, Robin's right, the Singer quote explicitly states that the sort of intuitionist judgments one might use to justify actions so as to sleep at night are likely derived from "discarded" sources or motivations and therefore replete with bias.
Patrick, if Hitler slept peacefully at night, would you say he was moral?
Whatever one does will likely be viewed by someone else at some time in the history of intelligences as completely and utterly immoral. There's simply no need to concern oneself with fads, just as long as you can sleep peacefully.