I think a similar fallacy (inferring that a moral claim can't be true because it would be awfully inconvenient given certain non-moral assumptions) underlies the "cluelessness" objection to consequentialism:
Demandingness, too. Folks can't just assume that the actual world is guaranteed to be convenient for us, come what may!
As a more general lesson (against moral parochialism): *whenever* an argument in moral theory depends upon assumptions about what's actual, you can know the argument is fallacious, because the true moral theory holds *independently* of which world is actual.
I think it stems from a discomfort with the idea that maybe they - and the vast majority of humans to ever live - have done something really bad. We instinctively want to believe that the average Joe has neutral or even good morality, not "pawn in a system of horrific suffering". It's why people were so upset about Famine, Affluence, and Morality.
I disagree with the claim that usually, on inspection, things turn out to be weirder than guessed. You know more about physics and philosophy than I do, so I won't quibble with your example in particular. But the inverse is definitely a common pattern in other domains. For instance, many supposed supernatural happenings turn out to be ordinary phenomena (mistaken identity, confusions as stories get passed between people, various weather phenomena, etc.). Similarly, if linguists think they've found a connection between two languages that are geographically very far apart, usually the real answer turns out to be something less weird (with some exceptions; the Siberian language Ket is widely acknowledged as being connected to the Na-Dene languages of North America). You can dispute what the reference class is, but for many reasonable reference classes, Bayesianism would suggest that we should favor less weird explanations. This is basically a variant of Ockham's razor.
This doesn't mean that you should treat something as impossible just because it's weird. But it is true that, for a set of possible hypotheses, the ones perceived as less weird are more likely to be true. You could certainly counter that Lyman Stone has the wrong definition of weirdness, or we need some more specialized reference set, but the argument here is valid for Bayesians and so shouldn't be termed a fallacy as a whole.
Weirdness should be seen as a quality in relation to some preexisting conceptual framework. Given framework Y, X is weird in relation to it.
In that case, we might expect less weirdness in the world the more confidence we have in the particular framework a particular thing is judged against, and the closer the thing being judged is to the aspects of that framework we have confidence in.
Aristotelean physics works pretty well for everyday life but the further you get from that frame the more weirdness you find.
Intuitive morality works pretty well for small scale human relationships (your family and friend groups), but the further you get from there the more weirdness you find…
Most of your arguments in favor of SIA (and for theism in general) involve clearly-this-is-crazy-style arguments so it seems hypocritical to then turn around and accuse others of doing the same thing.
He’s not objecting to clearly-this-is-crazy-style arguments across the board, just clearly-this-is-crazy-style arguments that have the following form https://philarchive.org/archive/IMPEVM
I think weirdness has some implications regarding actual moral responsibility. It’s one thing to say that the suffering of shrimp and bugs is bad or undesirable, it’s another thing to say that humans are responsible for preventing it.
We don’t assign moral responsibility to any other animal, even the most intelligent ones, for acts that would otherwise be considered heinous, e.g. dolphins and rape.
Obviously, humans are the most sophisticated and intelligent animals, and we are fundamentally different from all other species. That means that we have certain obligations to each other and the world around us.
However, we are still animals, with a limited emotional and intellectual capacity. It would be unfair to blame humans for not preventing the heat death of the universe, for example, because it’s beyond our capacity to fully appreciate, much less do anything about.
Similarly, I’m not convinced the average human can feel a strong moral compunction to oppose insect suffering, and I think the weirdness of it suggests that the issue may be outside the capacity of what could reasonably be expected of humans to deal with morally.
What’s your basis for assigning moral responsibility to humans for insect and shrimp suffering?
I’m generally opposed to basically all of BB’s views, so he should better speak for himself, but my understanding is that these shrimp are being farmed for human consumption. Whatever the actual degree of suffering, human shrimp-eaters and those who love them are arguably responsible for bringing it into being.
I can also see an additional, more general argument that knowledge of suffering coupled with the power to alleviate it incurs an obligation to act.
I think that people also start with a set of moral behaviours in mind, then work back to justify why those behaviours are correct. Virtuous people care for their communities and are generous to other humans; since those people are virtuous, then the world must be such that they are.
I would encourage you to read "The Problem of the Criterion," by Rod "the god" Chisolm. As he points out there, there's actually a deep error in saying (as you do here) things like "You shouldn’t start out certain that some action is right, and then conclude that its effects must not be so bad. Instead, you should first consider the effects it likely has and whether they’re good or bad" and thinking you're obviously a better moral reasoner than people who do the opposite. The error is in starting with a method (the Utilitarian method in your case) and not seeing that that's fundamentally on a par epistemically with starting with particular moral commtiments and constructing a method of moral reasoning from those commitments.
Try this argument on for size. If experiential valence (the admittedly oversimplified "measure" of good/bad) evolved to be proportional to the cognitive and/or embodied "inertia" it must be ready to overcome, then the "simpler" the architecture (which is by no means actually simple), the less "stabby" (very technical, I know) the redirect needs to be. This overall framing does not demand a lack of weirdness, but might provide a baseline for even trying to calibrate what weird even means, sufficient for some coordination.
For example, it would strike me as immediately weird for someone to argue that ethical consideration should be measured in biomass or by some formal calculation of neural complexity. However, I can conceive of some string of considerations that might have me take the argument seriously without being wholly convincing. The argument, as far as I could currently conceive of it, would always be bound to some theory of experiential valence. Weirdness to a first approximation holds less effect than weirdness to some latter approximation after taking an argument seriously.
I can sure try! The complex part is the premise adopted for the sake of argument, that of a certain flavor of utilitarianism where the sum of good/bad experience dictates ethical action.
The simpler version of the point attempted is that there is no evolutionary reason why a shrimp would have the capacity for a deeply negative experience. The more any given critter's behaviors are sufficiently explained by instinct and reflex, the less selective pressure for anything more than experiencing smaller redirects (ie dull pain even from major tissue damage) because there is less behavioral inertia to overcome.
To give a familiar example, we humans have the ability to forego food if we are deep in thought (as if hitting a snooze button on feeling hungry). However, eventually, we will experience "hunger pangs" which will outcompete and derail our thoughts and other cognitive functions. Our capacity for complex ecstasy and misery may be proportional to the "cognitive barriers" they need to break through.
The rest was just an example of "weirdness" that can only be taken so seriously as there seems something to be gained from taking it seriously.
I need to consider this a bit more, but my first response is that our mucking around in nature is so risky that we should be less inclined to do it, instead of more. Save The Shrimp -- at the cost of what other creature's suffering?
I agree with Silas on this: "If it then turns out upon further empirical investigation that the facts are probably different than first assumed, then we should no longer have any confidence in our previous judgement—and we definitely shouldn’t throw out the empirical evidence or moral principles in order to preserve the moral judgements."
I agree that messing with nature is risky, often tends to be bad, and we should have a presumption against doing it unless we’re pretty confident about the benefits. But that would be an argument against the mass scale farming and/or consumption of shrimp, i.e. an argument for taking shrimp welfare seriously, not an argument against doing so.
Eating billions of shrimp is the unnatural intervention. Leaving them alone is the default and I think pretty clearly should be the default in the absence of a clear reason otherwise.
In the case of farmed shrimp, there probably are not lots of other creatures affected. In the wild, it’s hard to know what the net effect on others of leaving them alone is, but I don’t see a reason to imagine that it’s so strongly negative that it outweighs the shrimp’s welfare interests. Do you?
I think a similar fallacy (inferring that a moral claim can't be true because it would be awfully inconvenient given certain non-moral assumptions) underlies the "cluelessness" objection to consequentialism:
https://www.goodthoughts.blog/p/consequentialism-and-cluelessness#%C2%A7the-possibility-of-moral-cluelessness
Demandingness, too. Folks can't just assume that the actual world is guaranteed to be convenient for us, come what may!
As a more general lesson (against moral parochialism): *whenever* an argument in moral theory depends upon assumptions about what's actual, you can know the argument is fallacious, because the true moral theory holds *independently* of which world is actual.
This Silas guy sounds really smart (and handsome)!
... and vain! 😉
I think it stems from a discomfort with the idea that maybe they - and the vast majority of humans to ever live - have done something really bad. We instinctively want to believe that the average Joe has neutral or even good morality, not "pawn in a system of horrific suffering". It's why people were so upset about Famine, Affluence, and Morality.
Off on this shrimp idiocy again. Good grief.
I disagree with the claim that usually, on inspection, things turn out to be weirder than guessed. You know more about physics and philosophy than I do, so I won't quibble with your example in particular. But the inverse is definitely a common pattern in other domains. For instance, many supposed supernatural happenings turn out to be ordinary phenomena (mistaken identity, confusions as stories get passed between people, various weather phenomena, etc.). Similarly, if linguists think they've found a connection between two languages that are geographically very far apart, usually the real answer turns out to be something less weird (with some exceptions; the Siberian language Ket is widely acknowledged as being connected to the Na-Dene languages of North America). You can dispute what the reference class is, but for many reasonable reference classes, Bayesianism would suggest that we should favor less weird explanations. This is basically a variant of Ockham's razor.
This doesn't mean that you should treat something as impossible just because it's weird. But it is true that, for a set of possible hypotheses, the ones perceived as less weird are more likely to be true. You could certainly counter that Lyman Stone has the wrong definition of weirdness, or we need some more specialized reference set, but the argument here is valid for Bayesians and so shouldn't be termed a fallacy as a whole.
Weirdness should be seen as a quality in relation to some preexisting conceptual framework. Given framework Y, X is weird in relation to it.
In that case, we might expect less weirdness in the world the more confidence we have in the particular framework a particular thing is judged against, and the closer the thing being judged is to the aspects of that framework we have confidence in.
Aristotelean physics works pretty well for everyday life but the further you get from that frame the more weirdness you find.
Intuitive morality works pretty well for small scale human relationships (your family and friend groups), but the further you get from there the more weirdness you find…
>a quality in relation to some preexisting conceptual framework. Given framework Y, X is weird in relation to it.
This can be applied to conceptions of "weirdness" themselves.
Hmm. That's a strange idea! 😎
Most of your arguments in favor of SIA (and for theism in general) involve clearly-this-is-crazy-style arguments so it seems hypocritical to then turn around and accuse others of doing the same thing.
He’s not objecting to clearly-this-is-crazy-style arguments across the board, just clearly-this-is-crazy-style arguments that have the following form https://philarchive.org/archive/IMPEVM
I think weirdness has some implications regarding actual moral responsibility. It’s one thing to say that the suffering of shrimp and bugs is bad or undesirable, it’s another thing to say that humans are responsible for preventing it.
We don’t assign moral responsibility to any other animal, even the most intelligent ones, for acts that would otherwise be considered heinous, e.g. dolphins and rape.
Obviously, humans are the most sophisticated and intelligent animals, and we are fundamentally different from all other species. That means that we have certain obligations to each other and the world around us.
However, we are still animals, with a limited emotional and intellectual capacity. It would be unfair to blame humans for not preventing the heat death of the universe, for example, because it’s beyond our capacity to fully appreciate, much less do anything about.
Similarly, I’m not convinced the average human can feel a strong moral compunction to oppose insect suffering, and I think the weirdness of it suggests that the issue may be outside the capacity of what could reasonably be expected of humans to deal with morally.
What’s your basis for assigning moral responsibility to humans for insect and shrimp suffering?
I’m generally opposed to basically all of BB’s views, so he should better speak for himself, but my understanding is that these shrimp are being farmed for human consumption. Whatever the actual degree of suffering, human shrimp-eaters and those who love them are arguably responsible for bringing it into being.
I can also see an additional, more general argument that knowledge of suffering coupled with the power to alleviate it incurs an obligation to act.
There’s a forthcoming paper which tries to precisely diagnose what’s wrong with this sort of reasoning https://philarchive.org/archive/IMPEVM
I shall have to read that. Thanks!
I think that people also start with a set of moral behaviours in mind, then work back to justify why those behaviours are correct. Virtuous people care for their communities and are generous to other humans; since those people are virtuous, then the world must be such that they are.
I would encourage you to read "The Problem of the Criterion," by Rod "the god" Chisolm. As he points out there, there's actually a deep error in saying (as you do here) things like "You shouldn’t start out certain that some action is right, and then conclude that its effects must not be so bad. Instead, you should first consider the effects it likely has and whether they’re good or bad" and thinking you're obviously a better moral reasoner than people who do the opposite. The error is in starting with a method (the Utilitarian method in your case) and not seeing that that's fundamentally on a par epistemically with starting with particular moral commtiments and constructing a method of moral reasoning from those commitments.
Try this argument on for size. If experiential valence (the admittedly oversimplified "measure" of good/bad) evolved to be proportional to the cognitive and/or embodied "inertia" it must be ready to overcome, then the "simpler" the architecture (which is by no means actually simple), the less "stabby" (very technical, I know) the redirect needs to be. This overall framing does not demand a lack of weirdness, but might provide a baseline for even trying to calibrate what weird even means, sufficient for some coordination.
For example, it would strike me as immediately weird for someone to argue that ethical consideration should be measured in biomass or by some formal calculation of neural complexity. However, I can conceive of some string of considerations that might have me take the argument seriously without being wholly convincing. The argument, as far as I could currently conceive of it, would always be bound to some theory of experiential valence. Weirdness to a first approximation holds less effect than weirdness to some latter approximation after taking an argument seriously.
It’s very difficult to understand what you’re trying to say here, could you try rephrase using more straightforward language?
I can sure try! The complex part is the premise adopted for the sake of argument, that of a certain flavor of utilitarianism where the sum of good/bad experience dictates ethical action.
The simpler version of the point attempted is that there is no evolutionary reason why a shrimp would have the capacity for a deeply negative experience. The more any given critter's behaviors are sufficiently explained by instinct and reflex, the less selective pressure for anything more than experiencing smaller redirects (ie dull pain even from major tissue damage) because there is less behavioral inertia to overcome.
To give a familiar example, we humans have the ability to forego food if we are deep in thought (as if hitting a snooze button on feeling hungry). However, eventually, we will experience "hunger pangs" which will outcompete and derail our thoughts and other cognitive functions. Our capacity for complex ecstasy and misery may be proportional to the "cognitive barriers" they need to break through.
The rest was just an example of "weirdness" that can only be taken so seriously as there seems something to be gained from taking it seriously.
I need to consider this a bit more, but my first response is that our mucking around in nature is so risky that we should be less inclined to do it, instead of more. Save The Shrimp -- at the cost of what other creature's suffering?
I agree with Silas on this: "If it then turns out upon further empirical investigation that the facts are probably different than first assumed, then we should no longer have any confidence in our previous judgement—and we definitely shouldn’t throw out the empirical evidence or moral principles in order to preserve the moral judgements."
The world is definitely weird, tho'.
I agree that messing with nature is risky, often tends to be bad, and we should have a presumption against doing it unless we’re pretty confident about the benefits. But that would be an argument against the mass scale farming and/or consumption of shrimp, i.e. an argument for taking shrimp welfare seriously, not an argument against doing so.
If the only creatures affected are the shrimp, then I agree. But is that the case? What are the overall effects?
FWIW: I don't eat shrimp.
Eating billions of shrimp is the unnatural intervention. Leaving them alone is the default and I think pretty clearly should be the default in the absence of a clear reason otherwise.
In the case of farmed shrimp, there probably are not lots of other creatures affected. In the wild, it’s hard to know what the net effect on others of leaving them alone is, but I don’t see a reason to imagine that it’s so strongly negative that it outweighs the shrimp’s welfare interests. Do you?
Humans have been eating shrimp since prehistoric times. I think that makes it pretty natural. The Chinese were farming shrimp by 600 BCE.
We eat so many shrimp now because there are so many of us. That's a whole nuther problem.
Yeah, not at this scale. That’s the relevant modern issue.
It's at this scale because of how many of us there are. What's the solution? Ration them? Ban eating them?