Richard Y Chappell on Good Thoughts

[Richard Y Chappell]

Ah, I should clarify that I just mean that *our concern for other individuals* is independently comprehensible only when it tracks their real interests (rather than moralizing). But I agree that consequentialists might value other things entirely, such as aesthetic value. That can also make sense. But again, I'd suggest only in consequentialist form: a *moralized* form of environmentalism, e.g. that prioritizes "purity" preferences (like anti-nuclear) over actually improving environmental outcomes, seems like something we should also be skeptical about.

It's interesting to imagine a "consequentialized" version of these views. Like, someone who says, "I agree it's worse for people, so I don't hold this view for their sake, but I just directly care that nobody is ever used as a means (no matter how much worse off this makes each person in expectation)." Or, "I agree it's worse for the environment, so I don't hold this view for the environment's sake, but I just directly care that we prohibit nuclear power (no matter how much coal we burn in its place)." I guess you're right that these values are then simply *alien* rather than mystical.

But perhaps that's another way of getting at my point: these are values that seemingly *make no sense* to us when taken at face value. So when people hold them, they presumably must be doing something other than taking the values at face value: instead they've been imbued with an extra mystical essence of "objective rightness" that's needed to transform them into something comprehensible (believing, falsely, that they're part and parcel of properly valuing *individuals* or *the environment*). But in fact there is no such mystical transformative essence. We must instead take them at face value. And we then find that deontology rests on incomprehensibly alien values.