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I wish very much that explainers of of this kind NOT center around exemplars on the individual level. In practice there is no applicability of political philoso
by jonahbenton 5y ago
I wish very much that explainers of of this kind NOT center around exemplars on the individual level. In practice there is no applicability of political philosophy on the individual level, only absurdity.
Where there is some value to this work is at scale policy. One's only hope for fairness, equity- any qualities of importance- depends on modeling and quantifying. All models are wrong but in these cases it is incumbent to try to make them as useful as possible.
- eluusive 5y agoOTOH, maybe politicians shouldn’t be trying to meddle in the wellbeing of individuals beyond providing access to infrastructure and policing?
- tomrod 5y agoThere is room for more systemic improvement than that, surely. Or do you count education, social safety net, basic healthcare as infrastructure?
- GavinMcG 5y agoHow do we measure "should" or "shouldn't" there? Answering whether you're right or wrong requires looking at the alternatives and seeing whether political programs that go beyond infrastructure and policing create a better world. There are arguably answers from all over the world that they do: universal healthcare and education are obvious ones.
- marginalia_nu 5y agoAn ethics for society is pointless as society has neither subjectivity nor moral agency. You may as well draw up a system of ethics for the weather. All ethics is individual ethics, as individual subjectivity is the only subjectivity, and individual moral agency is the only moral agency.
- GavinMcG 5y agoSo call it an ethics for society's leaders. They do have moral agency, but we expect them to channel their individual subjectivity in a certain way.
- marginalia_nu 5y agoI don't think it makes sense to partition society into leaders with moral responsibility, and followers without. It seems peculiar to think that what is good is shaped by external circumstance. Certainly if an action is good, it is good regardless of your lot in life.
- GavinMcG 5y agoNo one said followers have no moral responsibility. It's fine if it's one morality for everyone. It's just that as an individual with little power, the pursuit of that morality will involve very different actions than for individuals with a lot of power in relevant areas.
- marginalia_nu 5y agoIf it is the same morality for everyone, then why bother categorizing people into how much power they have? If a person is just and poor, then Elon Musk dies in a freak self-driving car accident and it turns out this just person is the single estranged heir, surely they haven't suddenly become more or less just by this unexpected windfall...? Whatever was good before is still good after, and whatever was evil before is still evil after.
- GavinMcG 5y agoYou're being quite sloppy with categories. You've shifted from saying "if an action is good, it is good regardless of your lot in life" to talking about people being more or less good, based on wealth. Nothing else in the conversation so far assumed a moral status in people; only in actions. Categorizing people by power follows from the fact that power enables actions unavailable to the powerless. I cannot meaningfully shift public opinion on climate change. Someone investing a billion dollars into cultural messaging probably could. The same ethics could apply to me and the billionaire: say, a rule of maximizing one's impact on the phenomenon most likely to negatively affect the most people. Now if you assume (as you seem to) that utility isn't part of the morality equation, then both I and the billionaire could each try our best and be equally good. But that's not an obviously true thing, and I think most people these days would assume that ends matter. In that light the billionaire can do more good than I can, and although the same ethical rule might apply to each of us, it's proportionally more relevant to the billionaire. So: an ethics for society's leaders.