I guess a lot of these faulty ideas come from the role of morality as a system of rules for putting up boundaries around acceptable behaviour, and for apportioning blameworthiness moreso than praiseworthiness. Similar to how the legal system usually gives individuals freedom so long as they’re not doing harm, our moral system mostly speaks to harms (rather than benefits) from actions (rather than inaction). By extension, the basis of the badness of these harms has to be a violation of “rights” (things that people deserve not to have done to them). Insofar as morality serves as a series of heuristics for people to follow, having a negativity-bias and action-bias are not necessarily wrong. It causes problems, however, if it this distorted lens is used to make claims about intrinsic right and wrong, or the idea that non-existence is an ideal.
Yeah, insofar as we accept biased norms of that sort, it’s really important to recognize that they are merely heuristics. Reifying (or, as Scott Alexander calls it, “crystallizing”) such heuristics into foundational moral principles risks a lot of harm.
(This is one of the themes I’m hoping to hammer home to philosophers in my next book. Besides deontic constraints, risk aversion offers another nice example.)
I guess a lot of these faulty ideas come from the role of morality as a system of rules for putting up boundaries around acceptable behaviour, and for apportioning blameworthiness moreso than praiseworthiness. Similar to how the legal system usually gives individuals freedom so long as they’re not doing harm, our moral system mostly speaks to harms (rather than benefits) from actions (rather than inaction). By extension, the basis of the badness of these harms has to be a violation of “rights” (things that people deserve not to have done to them). Insofar as morality serves as a series of heuristics for people to follow, having a negativity-bias and action-bias are not necessarily wrong. It causes problems, however, if it this distorted lens is used to make claims about intrinsic right and wrong, or the idea that non-existence is an ideal.
Yeah, insofar as we accept biased norms of that sort, it’s really important to recognize that they are merely heuristics. Reifying (or, as Scott Alexander calls it, “crystallizing”) such heuristics into foundational moral principles risks a lot of harm.
(This is one of the themes I’m hoping to hammer home to philosophers in my next book. Besides deontic constraints, risk aversion offers another nice example.)
Nice, I’ll look forward to reading this!