It occurred to me that the moral judgments around disgust are related to the conceptual processing we need to do in terms of achieving or avoiding goal states. The point is this: if we attempting to achieve a positive outcome, then we use a functional model - go to for the gusto. But if we are trying to avoid a bad outcome, we have to use causal reasoning, because (hopefully) we are dealing with counter-factuals. If you are alreading in some disgusting deep doo-doo, you've already blown it. What I was wondering was about the asymmetry of the moral reasoning of disgust vis-a-vis its opposite (pleasure? delightful? blissful?). I wrote a short essay on Medium, describing the moral issues involved, but also laying out the conceptual issues in terms of computer reasoning such as you would find in Artificial Intelligence:
In terms of morality, the conceptual reasoning behind states you want to avoid is qualitatively different from the reasoning you use to achieve a positive state. We strive for eudaimonia, but we employ causal reasoning to avoid ill-being. They are not mirror-images of each other. Striving at its best is automatic and almost intuitive. Causal reasoning is conditional.
Very Interesting piece. Although I’m quite often in favor of suspending judgement, how one gets from there to “error theory” is a bridge, way too far, for me.
Hi Massimo thank you for this excellent artical! I believe strongly in our evolutionary ethical past also and in many ways I think it gives us reason to believe in an objective morality - albeit a contingent and constructed one. However some philosophers , especially Joyce like you mentioned , make the case that our evolutionary past ‘debunks’ rather than vindicates morality. Richard Joyce argues that since morality is evolved to help us survive - morality therefore doesn’t derive from anything true - he argues at best we have non-cognitivism and cannot go beyond ‘our’ viewpoint to condemn something as objectively wrong; he writes ‘how much sounder might we sleep at night, were we confident that we hanged the criminal because he did something objectively wrong, as opposed to acknowledging that we hanged him because he did something we found wrong’ i.e non cognitivism. How would you respond to this - can criminal behaviour be objectively wrong or is it just a cultural prejudice to promote cooperation as Alex Rosenberg argues? Joyce is a strong error theorist and forcefully argues in many of his papers morality can claim no objectivity or overriding reasons and really someone that lacks moral desires has no reason to be moral.
What am I to make of the timing of this essay? A dissection of the trope 'Genocide is wrong' at a time when the possible genocide of two million people is in progress? A little self-indulgent, Massimo?
Fascinating. Always happy to see Hume discussed too. The background discussions of Pyrrhonism in your notes has helped me understand much I did not (or at least provided a framework for my thinking).
A couple of years ago, I had an email exchange with Paul Rozin after his work on disgust appeared in the New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/27/magazine/disgust-science.html
It occurred to me that the moral judgments around disgust are related to the conceptual processing we need to do in terms of achieving or avoiding goal states. The point is this: if we attempting to achieve a positive outcome, then we use a functional model - go to for the gusto. But if we are trying to avoid a bad outcome, we have to use causal reasoning, because (hopefully) we are dealing with counter-factuals. If you are alreading in some disgusting deep doo-doo, you've already blown it. What I was wondering was about the asymmetry of the moral reasoning of disgust vis-a-vis its opposite (pleasure? delightful? blissful?). I wrote a short essay on Medium, describing the moral issues involved, but also laying out the conceptual issues in terms of computer reasoning such as you would find in Artificial Intelligence:
https://medium.com/science-and-philosophy/functional-versus-explanatory-models-for-learning-708a36e57150
In terms of morality, the conceptual reasoning behind states you want to avoid is qualitatively different from the reasoning you use to achieve a positive state. We strive for eudaimonia, but we employ causal reasoning to avoid ill-being. They are not mirror-images of each other. Striving at its best is automatic and almost intuitive. Causal reasoning is conditional.
Why is David Hume in a toga, and do you think not believing in time is against nature which makes the belief immoral?
But isn't "murder" defined as socially disapproved killing, in turn meaning that all societies disapprove of murder?
Very Interesting piece. Although I’m quite often in favor of suspending judgement, how one gets from there to “error theory” is a bridge, way too far, for me.
timely and telling--thanks
Hi Massimo thank you for this excellent artical! I believe strongly in our evolutionary ethical past also and in many ways I think it gives us reason to believe in an objective morality - albeit a contingent and constructed one. However some philosophers , especially Joyce like you mentioned , make the case that our evolutionary past ‘debunks’ rather than vindicates morality. Richard Joyce argues that since morality is evolved to help us survive - morality therefore doesn’t derive from anything true - he argues at best we have non-cognitivism and cannot go beyond ‘our’ viewpoint to condemn something as objectively wrong; he writes ‘how much sounder might we sleep at night, were we confident that we hanged the criminal because he did something objectively wrong, as opposed to acknowledging that we hanged him because he did something we found wrong’ i.e non cognitivism. How would you respond to this - can criminal behaviour be objectively wrong or is it just a cultural prejudice to promote cooperation as Alex Rosenberg argues? Joyce is a strong error theorist and forcefully argues in many of his papers morality can claim no objectivity or overriding reasons and really someone that lacks moral desires has no reason to be moral.
What am I to make of the timing of this essay? A dissection of the trope 'Genocide is wrong' at a time when the possible genocide of two million people is in progress? A little self-indulgent, Massimo?
Fascinating. Always happy to see Hume discussed too. The background discussions of Pyrrhonism in your notes has helped me understand much I did not (or at least provided a framework for my thinking).