Why I'm Optimistic about Moral Philosophy
Good thoughts are cheaper than good actions
Many people are drawn to the cynical view that we will inevitably believe whatever is most convenient or in our self-interest to believe. I think that view is far too strong: While motivated reasoning is a real phenomenon, it’s far from impossible to overcome. We can reason well, not just rationalize, especially with training and suitable social scaffolding (e.g. critics who aren’t shy to call us out when we reason poorly).
Stefan Schubert—riffing off a recent post from Dan Williams—explains that we’re epistemically flexible but stubbornly self-regarding. It makes sense that evolutionary pressures would support flexible thinking (given the value of learning from experience) even while firmly locking in motivations that serve our selfish genes. (These include genuine care for others, but perhaps only for a narrow circle.)
Abstract reasoning can thus easily lead us to conclude that we ought to be much more impartial and altruistic than we actually are. The most fundamental problem in practical ethics is then how we react to this internal inconsistency. Motivated reasoning will clearly pull in one direction. Much of my public philosophy is directed at encouraging people to instead tolerate (recognizing) their imperfection while looking for relatively low-cost ways to move their moral margin in the impartially better direction. (Important to keep true belief practically affordable.)
I think it shouldn’t be that hard for ordinary, non-saintly people to do this to some extent. It helps that there can be personal rewards to doing good: I think that most people who take the 🔸10% pledge, for example, are (like me) very glad they did, and value how it adds meaning to their lives. We also have some reason to want others to be more utilitarian / impartially altruistic (or follow whatever norms would, in practice, best serve those ends),1 which may give us all some incentive to set up appropriate social scaffolding to incentivize abstract benevolence in (ourselves and) others.
So that’s why I’m (moderately) optimistic about moral philosophy, in a nutshell. Not all of it is great. There’s too much vibe-laundering and not enough principled thinking. But compared to the alternatives, (appropriately guardrailed) abstract thinking seems the best means we have for minimizing bias and identifying what would truly constitute moral progress. And from there, a mix of social incentives and the desire to think well of oneself can provide at least some motivational pressure to also (sometimes) do the better thing. Or at least vote for it, praise others who do it, and similar cheap — yet helpful — moves. And once the better thing is socially normalized (within one’s subculture), the force of social conformity may make it easier to follow suit.2
An amoralist may naturally prefer others in their social circle to have narrower concerns, so that they personally may reap more of the benefits. To avoid this, I guess we need to have inculcated a taste for integrity and a degree of disgust towards motivated reasoning. So it may depend significantly on one’s prior moral education and cultural norms.
So I may be slightly disagreeing here with Schubert’s claim that there’s no motivational analogue of epistemic deference: social conformity may help at least a little (once good social norms are in place).