DISQUS

Congrats!

DMonteith,

It seems as though you're writing like Will claimed that there are no harmful effects to humans from current levels of carbon. But he claimed that he is not aware of a NET negative externality from current levels of carbon. I assume (given my almost non-existent knowledge of economics) that these aren't equivalent claims. I imagine you disagree with his actual claim. But, just so you know, you don't seem to be addressing it very directly.

Haha. That's a nice movie, by the way, the robot one. - I should've been a bit more specific, though. The question should've been about imaginable benefits in a narrower sense than your response assumes. Like, did you mean that there are no imaginable (within reason) benefits that might justify the status quo? Or something like that. But I think I have my answer. Thanks.

Will,
By "any imagined compensating benefits" (when you're talking about how appeal to them can't morally justify keeping national borders as they are) do you mean to be talking about the compensating benefits that are normally brought up by defenders of the status quo? Or do you mean that there are no imaginable benefits that actually might come from keeping things as they are which would morally justify the current situation?

Just re-read my sloppy comment above. In the first paragraph I meant to say that it's not clear that one needs to prove that God doesn't exist in order to have best and sufficient reason to believe God doesn't exist (as opposed to not believing in God).

Also, I should've added the following sentence to the end of the last paragraph of the post: "And Will is merely making a claim about God, with certainty, in a case where he reasonably takes himself to have best and sufficient reason to believe the thing he's claiming."

There. It's still sloppy, I suppose. Just less so.

Joey,

It's not clear that one needs to prove that God doesn't exist in order to have best and sufficient reason to not believe in God. Probably, all one needs in order to have such reason is to think that the classic arguments for the existence of God aren't sound and that reference to God isn't needed in our best explanations about the world.

Also, it seems as though the most relevant (to this post and its comments) conception of God is something like the Judeo-Christian God. And there's great reason to think that that God can't exist, given what he's supposed to be like (all-good, all-loving, all-powerful, all-knowing, sends non-believers to hell forever).

Lastly, Will's certainty with respect to his position doesn't seem to be noticeably higher than yours about yours. We're often justified in making claims, with certainty, in cases where we have best and sufficient reason to believe the things we're claiming.

Beauty smackdown, Will!

Will,

I'd love to believe in your anti-platonism about universals. But I haven't yet seen an argument that justifies a belief in it. Then again, I haven't looked as hard as I should have. (I hate abstract objects, and I would LOVE to hear a great argument against platonism of all kinds.)

Your claim about there being only one kind of possibility isn't easy for me to believe either. It's difficult for me to shake the idea that talk about possible worlds is useful for helping us understand our concepts and/or the meanings of our words. Of course. that doesn't mean that there are other possible worlds. But it might mean that there is another kind of possibility than the one you think is real.

Cool post.

Will, That's an interesting position. I hadn't quite thought of it as a possibility, I don't think. I find the problem of the bindingness of morality to be fascinating, though. I tend to be sympathetic to the Mackie-style error theory: all moral judgments are false because there are no moral facts. - Anyway, good post.

Will,

Just curious. Are you completely unsympathetic to an error theory about morality? Your comment about the problem of explaining the bindingness of morality in a natural world made me wonder...

Yeah. That's cool. The New Yorker has a thing on Wikipedia, too. Talks a bit about both of those guys.

http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/060731...

Amen! Although, strangely (given how much I love air conditioning) I have not once owned an air conditioner in my 9+ years in Los Angeles. Thankfully, the past 4+ have been by the beach, where a/c isn't usually necessary. I have lived outside of LA, though. One of the more recent times was in 1999. Summer. NYC. The building required that I pay a flat fee of $50 a month to use a window unit. New York was crazy hot and humid that summer. Terrible. I paid that fee. I turned the thing on the moment it was installed. I turned it off a couple months later when I had to give it back. I don't know that I turned it off other than that...My apartment was a thing of beauty. An island of refreshing coldness on a real island of ungodly heat and humidity...Thanks Willis. You're the man.

cool!

Thanks, Will. I'll take a look at that. Not sure that I understand why you think that figuring out the meaning of important moral vocabulary like 'justice' is pointless. I can see why one would think that that is not all there is to figuring out all we want to know about justice. But it seems like a pretty fantastic start to me.

I'll read that paper though. Thanks again for the pointer.

Will,

Do you think that philosophers have ANYTHING reliable to say about the meanings of words? I mean, I'm of the opinion, as I hope and think that many are, that the meanings of words are determined by something like the usage and intentions of the linguistic community in general. So nobody's intuitiions should count for TOO much more than anyone else's, I guess. But assuming that philosophers are compentent speakers of their native languages (safe assumption) and assuming that they are better trained to examine their concepts, it doesn't seem unreasonable to think that they are going to be at least a bit more reliable than the average person in figuring out things about the meanings of words. (I'm ignoring the problems that philosophers encounter concerning their intuitions going all wacky due to explicit theories they have swallowed...)

Clearly, I think, the best way to figure out what a word means includes doing more than just polling some philosophers...Since philosophers don't make up even a significant portion of their linguistic communities. But what a philosopher thinks is the meaning of a word seems like it should count for something, right?

Happy Birthday!

Jacob,

I was the one who morphed things into a free-a-slave-or-get-a-billion-dollars situation, I think. But I don't think that there is anything especially Randian about my doing so. I'm not a Randian. I used to be. But here I'm just wondering about what Will's (and others') views are about how much more weight an agent can give his self-interest. I assume that Will would not give infinite weight to his self-interests, as a Randian would. But I imagine that he thinks it's okay to give some more weight to one's self-interest than to others'. (His comment about Schmidtz's view seems to confirm this.)

I thinkg it is okay to give more weight to one's self-interest. And I think it's an interesting project to figure out how much more weight we can, morally speaking, give our interests over those of others. (Separately, I think it's interesting to see how much weight a person puts on his self-interest, apart from his moral views.) That's why I changed the course of the discussion a bit. I mean, giving some stranger, who is basically a free person,a billion dollars over freeing some other person, you don't know, from slavery, IS a no-brainer. I think setting the situation up so that one has to weigh ONE'S self-interest against those of the slave is a bit more interesting.

Finally, good point about the messy facts about the world. But an interesting thing, I think, is that most people who would not take the billion dollars over freeing the slave do not think in economic terms. So, their not going about freeing a slave every once in awhile might still tell us something about their view about morality. And again, I think that could be interesting (and useful).

Thanks Will! That's interesting. I have some pretty strong intuitions against the first part of your comment, the part about there not being a correct moral theory. But I'll have to think more about that.

And you've mentioned Schmidtz's theory before, I think. I'll have to actually read that book where he discusses it. Sounds like a theory I might be interested in accepting.

Michael,

You're right that one's life might not be so happy if they chose to take the billion dollars over freeing the slave. There are a few things to say about this, actually, though.

I think there are plenty of people that would be able to be happier if they pushed the billion dollar button than the free-the-slave one. For them, at least, it would be in their self-interest to take the money.

Also, I actually think that many of us have enough money to free a slave right now. It's my impression that one can go over to the far east and buy a sex slave and then set them free. I seem to remember reading part of some NYT series on that last year. I don't know how much that would cost, but it seems that for many people, it wouldn't hurt them financially very much. And if they are willing to forgo a billion dollars to free the slave, then it seems they should be willing to give up a MUCH smaller chunk of money to free a slave. Especially if giving up the money won't negatively affect their financial stading in any significant way. BUT I would guess that more people are willing to say that they would forgo the billion dollars than are willing to spend a few thousand (or whatever) to free a sex slave in asia. I think that's interesting. And I wonder why exactly that is. (I mean, I can think of some explanations. But I have no real idea which is the best one.)

Lastly, I think we can change the thought experiment such that if you press the button that gives you the money you are also given a pill that erases your knowledge of the slave. That way you get all the money and none of the guilt. Now THAT would almost certainly be the egoistic choice. But I imagine that changing the situation in that way would NOT change Will's choice or his judgment that pressing the billion dollar button is morally unacceptable.

Will,

I realize that you might be finished responding to comments about this post. But I feel like giving it one more try here. Here goes...

The more I think about your response, the more curious I am about your current view about what the correct moral theory is. It sounds like you would chose to free a slave over getting a billion dollars AND that you think freeing the slave is the moral thing to do. That is a SERIOUSLY non-egoistic attitude, both in terms of personal and moral values. I'm assuming that you think that it's appropriate, or at least acceptable, to be somewhat egoistic. But I'm wondering just how non-egoistic you are nowadays...

So how about this one: Say you have another two buttons. Pushing one gives you and all of your loved ones VERY happy and VERY long lives. The other one frees one slave. Which one do you pick? And do you think it's morally unacceptable to pick either one?

Right. All the enslaved and oppressed women in the world aren't a country. I guess I don't know why I focused on countries in my question...Maybe it was because your thought experiment partly focuses on a certain kind of nationalist preference. And nationalist preferences have to do with countries...?

Anyway, I'm really just interested where you are nowadays with the whole weighing the interests of others against your own interests, and weighing the interests of your country against those of other countries. (I can remember a time when you might have pressed the other button...) This thought experiment of yours just made me wodner about that.

And, for the record, I would push the same button that you push, without a doubt. It's more important to me that women aren't enslaved or oppressed. So I'm not coming from a place of criticism in any way, just a place of curiousity.

Will,

Do you think it is at all acceptable to put more importance on the health of one's country than on the health of other countries? I imagine you do. What general principle do you accept for guidance in such thought experiments? Does the benefit to other countries have to be MUCH greater than the benefit to the country you live in, in order for it to be unacceptable to chose push the button that benefits your country over the rest. Or does it just have to be somewhat greater?

Mackie's awesome! Go error theory!

I say stick with the analytic philosophers, to start out with at least. They seem to be the only ones that pay the proper amount of attention to moral language. After getting a feel for the subject through their writings, venture off to the non-analytic stuff, if you feel like it...

oh, right. there it is! sorry. thanks!