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Richard Y Chappell's avatar

I tend to think of it as having universal application, like Kantians do. Though I don't think all rational beings would have to have the full range of emotional responses that we do, and there may be alien attitudes that some rational beings could have (with associated fittingness conditions) that we can't even imagine.

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Peter Gerdes's avatar

Whoa, you believe these feelings have some kind of rational basis? So like you doubt that you could induce different ones with similar moral 'feel' with appropriate brain interventions?

Like there is some necessary connection between qualia and moral sentiments?

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Richard Y Chappell's avatar

That's a wild non-sequitur. It's always possible to induce irrational thoughts and responses with brain interventions. "Irrational" does not mean "impossible" -- far from it!

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Peter Gerdes's avatar

Nevermind ..I was a bit confused because of the assumption it had to be narfowly moral not just more broadly normative.

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Peter Gerdes's avatar

Fair, but I guess I'm trying to understand why you can't then seperate the experiences and the reasoning.

I suspect you would agree that some hypothetical agent who didn't have any feelings or intuitions of this kind wouldn't in fact come to these conclusions. Or are you suggesting that you can, a la Kant, derive them from pure logic alone?

Basically I'm a bit confused about how you understand the evidential/epistemic status of moral sentiments as an addition to pure logical consequence of is your notion of rationality much broader than that?

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Richard Y Chappell's avatar

Much broader notion of rationality! Logically coherent agents include Future-Tuesday indifference, counter-inductivists, and ideally coherent Caligulas who value torture for its own sake. I think they're all objectively misguided ("irrational"). Mere coherence is no guarantee of substantive rationality.

More on my moral epistemology here: https://philpapers.org/rec/CHAKWM

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Peter Gerdes's avatar

Ok thanks that helps alot

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