Brilliant. And it also makes sense overall, in that:
1) it fits with morality as that something evolved because of humans living in groups with massively benefited from cooperation beyond kin preference and had to deal with all kind of cheaters/free riders etc. From this pov, the key function of a "natural" moral judgement is PRECISELY to…
Brilliant. And it also makes sense overall, in that:
1) it fits with morality as that something evolved because of humans living in groups with massively benefited from cooperation beyond kin preference and had to deal with all kind of cheaters/free riders etc. From this pov, the key function of a "natural" moral judgement is PRECISELY to asses whether we can trust a person, ie to asses their character.
2) the latter explains very nicely why people attribute moral and competence traits rather differently based on individual acts (eg many fewer moral transgressions are sufficient to attribute a negative moral trait than it's for competence traits)
3) and historically it also fits the trajectory of the development of formal ethics / moral philosophy. Virtue ethics goes back millennia.
VE makes profound sense for an individual who on the one hand wants to have a tool for vetting potential allies or enemies, on the other wants to be seen as a desirable ally (or occasionally a formidable enemy, I guess). It even deals (at a stretch) with the whole mess of "when obligation isn't quite the right thing" concerning the most intimate relationships.
On the other hand it's of course almost entirely useless for big scale decision making about fungible units of sentience/suffering, because in those situations all that matters is beneficence. But we have not evolved to deal with those situations because they just didn't occur for the vast majority of people until fairly recently. Thus the need to "invent" rational obligation based systems (and also incidentally, why so called "ethics" of care feels so insanely regressive).
Brilliant. And it also makes sense overall, in that:
1) it fits with morality as that something evolved because of humans living in groups with massively benefited from cooperation beyond kin preference and had to deal with all kind of cheaters/free riders etc. From this pov, the key function of a "natural" moral judgement is PRECISELY to asses whether we can trust a person, ie to asses their character.
2) the latter explains very nicely why people attribute moral and competence traits rather differently based on individual acts (eg many fewer moral transgressions are sufficient to attribute a negative moral trait than it's for competence traits)
3) and historically it also fits the trajectory of the development of formal ethics / moral philosophy. Virtue ethics goes back millennia.
VE makes profound sense for an individual who on the one hand wants to have a tool for vetting potential allies or enemies, on the other wants to be seen as a desirable ally (or occasionally a formidable enemy, I guess). It even deals (at a stretch) with the whole mess of "when obligation isn't quite the right thing" concerning the most intimate relationships.
On the other hand it's of course almost entirely useless for big scale decision making about fungible units of sentience/suffering, because in those situations all that matters is beneficence. But we have not evolved to deal with those situations because they just didn't occur for the vast majority of people until fairly recently. Thus the need to "invent" rational obligation based systems (and also incidentally, why so called "ethics" of care feels so insanely regressive).