The Enlightenment idea that we cannot have direct experience of things, only mental representations of them, has a lot to answer for. Because, as soon as reality is situated in the head it becomes subjective. This seems to be how 'theorists' benefit from infinitely malleable interpretations of even basically obvious facts.
Love that you lump the theorists of the reactionary & progressive traditions together. They both drive me nuts.
Skimmed only but 3 comments Re "infinite degrees of freedom".
1) Does having infinite degrees of freedom makes something unscientific? Isn't non-parametric statistics a big deal? Gaussian processes are one cool example that allows for the flexibility of infinite parameters.
2) I don't think having infinite degrees of freedom is necessarily a bad thing for an ethical theory. I find it sort of plausible that ethics would involve infinitely many variables and parameters. Sure there's something attractive about having just one, but infinite feels more "natural" than, say, 5. [I'm torn on arbitrariness arguments.]
3) I think if one spends some time trying to formulate a normative-ethical theory that captures any of the many highly attractive (to all humans) non-utilitarian ideas, it quickly starts to seem likely that one is not going to be able to get a theory that is fully and precisely specified. That's ok. You could say that about most interesting exercises in conceptual analysis. A reasonable response is to be a moral particularist who still has some general "themes" running through their school of thought. Indeed, virtually all non-utilitarians are moral particularists, closeted or otherwise.
The Enlightenment idea that we cannot have direct experience of things, only mental representations of them, has a lot to answer for. Because, as soon as reality is situated in the head it becomes subjective. This seems to be how 'theorists' benefit from infinitely malleable interpretations of even basically obvious facts.
Love that you lump the theorists of the reactionary & progressive traditions together. They both drive me nuts.
> This is one reason that, for example, Hanania’s article about the social media causes misery hypothesis is convincing;
FYI: "Hanania's article" links to https://www.richardhanania.com/p/how-i-changed-my-mind-on-social-mediahttps://www.richardhanania.com/p/how-i-changed-my-mind-on-social-media, which is the same URL twice, which doesn't go anywhere.
Skimmed only but 3 comments Re "infinite degrees of freedom".
1) Does having infinite degrees of freedom makes something unscientific? Isn't non-parametric statistics a big deal? Gaussian processes are one cool example that allows for the flexibility of infinite parameters.
2) I don't think having infinite degrees of freedom is necessarily a bad thing for an ethical theory. I find it sort of plausible that ethics would involve infinitely many variables and parameters. Sure there's something attractive about having just one, but infinite feels more "natural" than, say, 5. [I'm torn on arbitrariness arguments.]
3) I think if one spends some time trying to formulate a normative-ethical theory that captures any of the many highly attractive (to all humans) non-utilitarian ideas, it quickly starts to seem likely that one is not going to be able to get a theory that is fully and precisely specified. That's ok. You could say that about most interesting exercises in conceptual analysis. A reasonable response is to be a moral particularist who still has some general "themes" running through their school of thought. Indeed, virtually all non-utilitarians are moral particularists, closeted or otherwise.