I think you're saddling me with a lot of extra baggage here that I didn't sign up for! :-)
I agree that it's important to be able to say "No" to the constant barrage of requests and demands from others. (Many of those requests aren't even efficient uses of your time or resources: even a saint would turn them down! And we aren't required to be saints.) Once someone has met their obligations, they're free from blame and guilt. Aiming to get by doing the absolute minimum permissible is not "wrong". But it's also not superlative. It's just OK. Morally mediocre. Less than virtuous, for all that it avoids outright vice.
I'd like to encourage people to aim at least a bit higher than that. (It's a tricky question how much higher.) Just think: wouldn't it be nice to be outright *virtuous*? Better than morally mediocre? Nobody's perfect, of course, and I don't think that's cause for deep angst or guilt. Anything better than OK is positively morally *good*! Still, I think pretty much all of us could stand to do better than we typically do. A moral vision that recognizes and encourages this is *more accurate* than one that's fixated on the bare minimum for permissibility.
You seem to have a very narrow conception of "morality" -- as being "to do with blame, with justice, with obligations to others". I have little interest in anything so narrow. I'm more concerned with what you call "ethics", or others might call "practical normativity": how to live; what is overall worth doing, etc. My suggestion is that *helping others*, and trying to make the world a better place, is a central component of ethics, so understood. You could fail to do this without warranting blame. Not every practical error is so bad as to warrant blame, after all. But still, if you ask yourself the question, "How should I live?", you're making a kind of mistake if you settle on the answer, "Do the absolute minimum I can morally get away with to help others, and then just get on with the rest of my life."
So, to be clear: my view is that it's *ethically better* to do more than the minimum to help others. Do you really disagree with this?
This is good stuff – I think it all helps illustrate your first point that it's good to have cross-camp engagement, because it illustrates the different ways our concepts are put together. I'm still fairly confident that there are in fact substantive things we disagree about, but it requires some teasing out to establish what they are!
Yes, I absolutely think it would be better to be outright virtuous, and most of us could stand to do better than we are. Our lives would be better if we did; we should encourage ourselves and others to do so. We are agreed on all that. It's a worse life when we limit our virtue to obligation; indeed I've written before on how the supererogatory acts are the one that matter most: https://loveofallwisdom.com/blog/2015/08/the-superogatory-acts-are-the-ones-that-matter/
I think we are agreed to that point. Where I'm still seeing differences is on what constitutes that virtue – that is, on the ethical life that goes beyond the minimum of obligation. Where I want to be more precise is on the distinction between three things: 1) that *ethical or virtuous life* (or "practical normativity", which is similar enough in the relevant senses); 2) *helping others*; and 3) the *general welfare*.
On your closing question, I think it is ethically better to do more than the minimum to help others in *most but not all cases*. The big counterexample I have in mind is a mousy woman who was raised in a patriarchal household and trained all her life to serve others and put others ahead of herself. For her, I would argue, it is typically ethically better to help others *less* than she has been, and learn to focus more on herself and her own needs and flourishing. In this case, doing the minimum to help others may well *be* the ethically best option – at the very least as a therapeutic exercise to help her focus on herself, and perhaps even in the long term.
And while in this comment you're referring simply to helping others, the beneficentrism you spelled out before was about the *general welfare*, which is something more specific still (from the agent's perspective). That's where a partialist objection comes in. Helping those close to you is not directed at the *general* welfare. Sure, each time you increase a loved one's welfare that adds to the general welfare, but the same is true of each time you increase your own welfare. The "helping others" that I take to be generally ethically better has to do primarily with going out of the way to help friends, neighbours, coworkers. Can it involve giving more money to charity? Sure. But I'd have more praise for someone who's unfailingly kind to the people they interact with in daily life than for someone who gives away millions – even though the latter probably does more for the general welfare, in the sense that term would usually be used.
Let's try to make that last disagreement more precise. Praiseworthiness depends on one's motivations, not just actual consequences. But here are two further claims I'd want to make:
(i) A fully virtuous agent will have significant concern for the general welfare, and so would be strongly motivated to donate to effective global charities. (This seems compatible with having a generally helpful & co-operative disposition towards those around them.) Such an agent is ethically better and more virtuous than one who *only* cares about locals.
(ii) If a millionaire is tossing up between either (a) donating half their wealth to the most cost-effective global charities they can find, saving thousands of lives in expectation, or (b) using that wealth to throw a massive and memorable block party for their friends and neighbors (involving many minor acts of kindness for those lucky enough to get to attend), option (a) is both more praiseworthy and an all-round better choice.
Yeah, I think this is where we do get to the point of disagreement (and I'm glad we made it far enough to nail that down!) I don't think that an agent is necessarily better for having the motivation or global concern, nor that option (a) is necessarily more praiseworthy or better (though either may turn out to be better depending on the particular case).
Hi Richard and Amod, I followed your back and forth, and although not a philosopher by any means, I have put up a publication in which I cannot avoid a bit of philosophy and especially of morality. Because the main problem of AI is to align it with human values.
Would you mind looking it over and commenting on some of the essays, letting me know what I get wrong and what I get right? It would help me steer the publication in the right direction, with the kind of back and forth you have shown in your comments here. Thank you.
Thanks, Adrian! I don't have time at present to look over your existing essays, but I have subscribed to your newsletter and look forward to reading it in the future.
"Living a good life means, among other things, not just making others happy but being happy oneself."
Yes! I think the split between morality as "doing right" and morality as "being good" is useful in certain contexts, maybe even necessary in legal ones, but I wouldn't want to lose sight of what grounds ethical behavior—what the entire point is—which I take to be desire in the broadest sense, the 'telos' of which is flourishing ('happiness' works for me too). Virtue ethics may be vague and short on details, but I think it nails it precisely by being so flexible and general. We don't get a set of rules for what flourishing means in every case, but there is the possibility of knowing our own flourishing, though it's not necessarily easy.
Fascinating. I feel we (in the educated culturally liberal Anglosphere at least) live in the world where we're constantly told that prioritising one's own (especially emotional) comfort (often framed as "well being") is not only permissible but positively virtuous, where the idea of NOT prioritising that or (perish the thought!) even a limited level of sacrifice is seen as evidence of "people pleasing" emotional dysfunction/pathology, or "not having boundaries", where we're constantly bombarded with "content" that encourages us to put ourselves first and any obligation towards others (apart perhaps from a duty of care towards underage children, but even that is limited -- eg criticism of couples who "stay together for the children") as secondary.
And I tend towards the position you attribute to Richard: I think there IS something ethically wrong with people who are not even minimally interested in beneficence beyond the circle of extended self (kin/close community).
I think the educated Anglosphere is unusual in two contrasting ways. One, it does encourage us to prioritize our own well-being... and two, it *also* urges us to prioritize beneficence to those beyond our extended circle. I suspect there is a connection, in that both views are encouraged by an atomic conception of self - as opposed to the much more common worldwide view of self as person-in-community, which prioritizes kin and community over both individual and global.
I think there are a few dimensions worth considering:
Magnitude of action: How guilty should we feel about the enormous gap between how much good we do and how much good it is possible for us to do? How much should we judge others on that basis?
Distribution of actions: Given that our time and energy is limited, what is the right portfolio of activities to engage in?
Responses:
- The tantric view would say if guilt is arising, work with the liberated energy of that guilt for the benefit. So maybe the guilt could disclose something positive if worked with skillfully. If not, it may not lead to sustainable giving, bitterness, burnout. Conversely, stamping out the guilt entirely has its own dangers. Moral exemplars and entrepreneurs, pushing at the margins of our intuitions serve a valuable purpose. Collectively it's good that there's at least some disagreement.
- The tantric view on judging other people - on the one hand, everything is empty and there is no real self for you to judge -- it's just unfolding of karma on the absolute level etc, simultaneously judgment can sometimes arise in the beneficent service. Might it be skillful for us to judge who is morally mediocre and who is less so? If we are talking to a group of people that are earnestly deeply arguing about the best way to be moral on the internet, it might be safe to assume everyone is trying their best and we should be humble regarding our confidence we have the precisely correct moral portfolio. In a different situation, expressing more confidence in our moral claims might be appropriate.
- Regarding our confidence - are we sure the gap really that large? The world is exceedingly complicated, and there are many reasons to doubt the expected suffering reduction of activities further away from one's sphere of influence or understanding. I don't think there are fewer philanthropic free lunches than people commonly suppose (not a reason not to do some giving though!).
- Why it's harder to give away bigger piles of money: piles of money / power pervert the incentives of people talking to you, making it harder and harder to get the information you need to make good decisions about where to give that money away.
- Since there is a knowledge gradient regarding the good producing impact of our actions, it implies that the most direct effect you can have is on yourself. Therefore if you are really unhappy, the highest expected return might be fixing that - and indeed experientially is the thing that most unlocks being able to help others. Or, put your oxygen mask on before helping other passengers.
Thanks, Paul. In general I don't rely on tantra for everyday ethical guidance, because as I understand it it's supposed to be an exceptional practice for highly advanced practitioners (which I'm not). That said, I do think guilt plays a legitimate role in a healthy emotional life. This is why I think there is a real but limited part of life that *is* marked by obligation. A manager has the obligation to look out for their employees' well-being at work ( https://loveofallwisdom.substack.com/p/the-confucian-obligations-of-a-manager ); a manager who neglects to do that *should* feel guilty about it, in part because that guilt will motivate them to do better.
Can you speak a bit more about your stance on tantra? That's really interesting. Is it that tantra can't be a universal basis for morality because it's only for certain people? Also for you personally - tantric teachers and teachings are widely available. Do you think they wouldn't work for you? Sorry I don't want to press you to get too personal if you don't want to. I guess my view is partly that tantra is a more helpful orientation to reality for householders than other forms of Buddhism which can be so life denying - like I know you've written on Santideva - his view on the body for example does not seem like a good way to be for a non monastic.
As I understand it, traditionally Buddhist tantra is a secret teaching reserved for advanced practitioners - and there's a reason for that, because it relies on the most dangerous and harmful parts of human psychology. Once you have spent years or decades working on controlling your anger or your lust, *then* you're ready for the secret teaching that releases it in a controlled environment. To jump straight to that teaching without the preparation is worse - way worse - than doing nothing at all. It's like consuming Michael Phelps's diet when you're sedentary. I think most pre-20th century practitioners of Buddhist tantra would freak out at the thought that "tantric sex" manuals are being sold to random newbies who've never encountered Buddhism before; they might regret having ever understood the teaching.
Having said all that, I don't think that lust – or worldly existence in general – is nearly as harmful as the classical texts say it is. But to build a Buddhist tradition that accommodates that belief, I think it's better to incorporate and harmonize non-Buddhist ideas that are not tantra. The longest-standing version of that project is probably in East Asian Buddhist traditions that incorporate Daoism; I'm trying to think through a modern Western version that incorporates Aristotle and expressive individualism. I don't think tantra is the right place to look, not for people who haven't had the years of ritual preparation that are supposed to be the prerequisite for it.
The point comes out in particular for me in something like Emily McRae's work on anger: she thinks that tantra makes for a Buddhist justification for our modern intuitions that political anger is good, which it absolutely isn't - you have to jettison your normal intuitions and prejudices first before you're ready. I have a section on that in my book manuscript (which I'm currently shopping around to publishers).
I think you're saddling me with a lot of extra baggage here that I didn't sign up for! :-)
I agree that it's important to be able to say "No" to the constant barrage of requests and demands from others. (Many of those requests aren't even efficient uses of your time or resources: even a saint would turn them down! And we aren't required to be saints.) Once someone has met their obligations, they're free from blame and guilt. Aiming to get by doing the absolute minimum permissible is not "wrong". But it's also not superlative. It's just OK. Morally mediocre. Less than virtuous, for all that it avoids outright vice.
I'd like to encourage people to aim at least a bit higher than that. (It's a tricky question how much higher.) Just think: wouldn't it be nice to be outright *virtuous*? Better than morally mediocre? Nobody's perfect, of course, and I don't think that's cause for deep angst or guilt. Anything better than OK is positively morally *good*! Still, I think pretty much all of us could stand to do better than we typically do. A moral vision that recognizes and encourages this is *more accurate* than one that's fixated on the bare minimum for permissibility.
You seem to have a very narrow conception of "morality" -- as being "to do with blame, with justice, with obligations to others". I have little interest in anything so narrow. I'm more concerned with what you call "ethics", or others might call "practical normativity": how to live; what is overall worth doing, etc. My suggestion is that *helping others*, and trying to make the world a better place, is a central component of ethics, so understood. You could fail to do this without warranting blame. Not every practical error is so bad as to warrant blame, after all. But still, if you ask yourself the question, "How should I live?", you're making a kind of mistake if you settle on the answer, "Do the absolute minimum I can morally get away with to help others, and then just get on with the rest of my life."
So, to be clear: my view is that it's *ethically better* to do more than the minimum to help others. Do you really disagree with this?
This is good stuff – I think it all helps illustrate your first point that it's good to have cross-camp engagement, because it illustrates the different ways our concepts are put together. I'm still fairly confident that there are in fact substantive things we disagree about, but it requires some teasing out to establish what they are!
Yes, I absolutely think it would be better to be outright virtuous, and most of us could stand to do better than we are. Our lives would be better if we did; we should encourage ourselves and others to do so. We are agreed on all that. It's a worse life when we limit our virtue to obligation; indeed I've written before on how the supererogatory acts are the one that matter most: https://loveofallwisdom.com/blog/2015/08/the-superogatory-acts-are-the-ones-that-matter/
I think we are agreed to that point. Where I'm still seeing differences is on what constitutes that virtue – that is, on the ethical life that goes beyond the minimum of obligation. Where I want to be more precise is on the distinction between three things: 1) that *ethical or virtuous life* (or "practical normativity", which is similar enough in the relevant senses); 2) *helping others*; and 3) the *general welfare*.
On your closing question, I think it is ethically better to do more than the minimum to help others in *most but not all cases*. The big counterexample I have in mind is a mousy woman who was raised in a patriarchal household and trained all her life to serve others and put others ahead of herself. For her, I would argue, it is typically ethically better to help others *less* than she has been, and learn to focus more on herself and her own needs and flourishing. In this case, doing the minimum to help others may well *be* the ethically best option – at the very least as a therapeutic exercise to help her focus on herself, and perhaps even in the long term.
And while in this comment you're referring simply to helping others, the beneficentrism you spelled out before was about the *general welfare*, which is something more specific still (from the agent's perspective). That's where a partialist objection comes in. Helping those close to you is not directed at the *general* welfare. Sure, each time you increase a loved one's welfare that adds to the general welfare, but the same is true of each time you increase your own welfare. The "helping others" that I take to be generally ethically better has to do primarily with going out of the way to help friends, neighbours, coworkers. Can it involve giving more money to charity? Sure. But I'd have more praise for someone who's unfailingly kind to the people they interact with in daily life than for someone who gives away millions – even though the latter probably does more for the general welfare, in the sense that term would usually be used.
Let's try to make that last disagreement more precise. Praiseworthiness depends on one's motivations, not just actual consequences. But here are two further claims I'd want to make:
(i) A fully virtuous agent will have significant concern for the general welfare, and so would be strongly motivated to donate to effective global charities. (This seems compatible with having a generally helpful & co-operative disposition towards those around them.) Such an agent is ethically better and more virtuous than one who *only* cares about locals.
(ii) If a millionaire is tossing up between either (a) donating half their wealth to the most cost-effective global charities they can find, saving thousands of lives in expectation, or (b) using that wealth to throw a massive and memorable block party for their friends and neighbors (involving many minor acts of kindness for those lucky enough to get to attend), option (a) is both more praiseworthy and an all-round better choice.
Yeah, I think this is where we do get to the point of disagreement (and I'm glad we made it far enough to nail that down!) I don't think that an agent is necessarily better for having the motivation or global concern, nor that option (a) is necessarily more praiseworthy or better (though either may turn out to be better depending on the particular case).
Hi Richard and Amod, I followed your back and forth, and although not a philosopher by any means, I have put up a publication in which I cannot avoid a bit of philosophy and especially of morality. Because the main problem of AI is to align it with human values.
Would you mind looking it over and commenting on some of the essays, letting me know what I get wrong and what I get right? It would help me steer the publication in the right direction, with the kind of back and forth you have shown in your comments here. Thank you.
https://adrianzidaritz.substack.com
Thanks, Adrian! I don't have time at present to look over your existing essays, but I have subscribed to your newsletter and look forward to reading it in the future.
Thank you!
"Living a good life means, among other things, not just making others happy but being happy oneself."
Yes! I think the split between morality as "doing right" and morality as "being good" is useful in certain contexts, maybe even necessary in legal ones, but I wouldn't want to lose sight of what grounds ethical behavior—what the entire point is—which I take to be desire in the broadest sense, the 'telos' of which is flourishing ('happiness' works for me too). Virtue ethics may be vague and short on details, but I think it nails it precisely by being so flexible and general. We don't get a set of rules for what flourishing means in every case, but there is the possibility of knowing our own flourishing, though it's not necessarily easy.
Agreed on all counts!
I'm with you on this one, Amod. Well put.
Fascinating. I feel we (in the educated culturally liberal Anglosphere at least) live in the world where we're constantly told that prioritising one's own (especially emotional) comfort (often framed as "well being") is not only permissible but positively virtuous, where the idea of NOT prioritising that or (perish the thought!) even a limited level of sacrifice is seen as evidence of "people pleasing" emotional dysfunction/pathology, or "not having boundaries", where we're constantly bombarded with "content" that encourages us to put ourselves first and any obligation towards others (apart perhaps from a duty of care towards underage children, but even that is limited -- eg criticism of couples who "stay together for the children") as secondary.
And I tend towards the position you attribute to Richard: I think there IS something ethically wrong with people who are not even minimally interested in beneficence beyond the circle of extended self (kin/close community).
I wonder if there's a connection.
I think the educated Anglosphere is unusual in two contrasting ways. One, it does encourage us to prioritize our own well-being... and two, it *also* urges us to prioritize beneficence to those beyond our extended circle. I suspect there is a connection, in that both views are encouraged by an atomic conception of self - as opposed to the much more common worldwide view of self as person-in-community, which prioritizes kin and community over both individual and global.
I think there are a few dimensions worth considering:
Magnitude of action: How guilty should we feel about the enormous gap between how much good we do and how much good it is possible for us to do? How much should we judge others on that basis?
Distribution of actions: Given that our time and energy is limited, what is the right portfolio of activities to engage in?
Responses:
- The tantric view would say if guilt is arising, work with the liberated energy of that guilt for the benefit. So maybe the guilt could disclose something positive if worked with skillfully. If not, it may not lead to sustainable giving, bitterness, burnout. Conversely, stamping out the guilt entirely has its own dangers. Moral exemplars and entrepreneurs, pushing at the margins of our intuitions serve a valuable purpose. Collectively it's good that there's at least some disagreement.
- The tantric view on judging other people - on the one hand, everything is empty and there is no real self for you to judge -- it's just unfolding of karma on the absolute level etc, simultaneously judgment can sometimes arise in the beneficent service. Might it be skillful for us to judge who is morally mediocre and who is less so? If we are talking to a group of people that are earnestly deeply arguing about the best way to be moral on the internet, it might be safe to assume everyone is trying their best and we should be humble regarding our confidence we have the precisely correct moral portfolio. In a different situation, expressing more confidence in our moral claims might be appropriate.
- Regarding our confidence - are we sure the gap really that large? The world is exceedingly complicated, and there are many reasons to doubt the expected suffering reduction of activities further away from one's sphere of influence or understanding. I don't think there are fewer philanthropic free lunches than people commonly suppose (not a reason not to do some giving though!).
- Why it's harder to give away bigger piles of money: piles of money / power pervert the incentives of people talking to you, making it harder and harder to get the information you need to make good decisions about where to give that money away.
- Since there is a knowledge gradient regarding the good producing impact of our actions, it implies that the most direct effect you can have is on yourself. Therefore if you are really unhappy, the highest expected return might be fixing that - and indeed experientially is the thing that most unlocks being able to help others. Or, put your oxygen mask on before helping other passengers.
Thanks, Paul. In general I don't rely on tantra for everyday ethical guidance, because as I understand it it's supposed to be an exceptional practice for highly advanced practitioners (which I'm not). That said, I do think guilt plays a legitimate role in a healthy emotional life. This is why I think there is a real but limited part of life that *is* marked by obligation. A manager has the obligation to look out for their employees' well-being at work ( https://loveofallwisdom.substack.com/p/the-confucian-obligations-of-a-manager ); a manager who neglects to do that *should* feel guilty about it, in part because that guilt will motivate them to do better.
Can you speak a bit more about your stance on tantra? That's really interesting. Is it that tantra can't be a universal basis for morality because it's only for certain people? Also for you personally - tantric teachers and teachings are widely available. Do you think they wouldn't work for you? Sorry I don't want to press you to get too personal if you don't want to. I guess my view is partly that tantra is a more helpful orientation to reality for householders than other forms of Buddhism which can be so life denying - like I know you've written on Santideva - his view on the body for example does not seem like a good way to be for a non monastic.
As I understand it, traditionally Buddhist tantra is a secret teaching reserved for advanced practitioners - and there's a reason for that, because it relies on the most dangerous and harmful parts of human psychology. Once you have spent years or decades working on controlling your anger or your lust, *then* you're ready for the secret teaching that releases it in a controlled environment. To jump straight to that teaching without the preparation is worse - way worse - than doing nothing at all. It's like consuming Michael Phelps's diet when you're sedentary. I think most pre-20th century practitioners of Buddhist tantra would freak out at the thought that "tantric sex" manuals are being sold to random newbies who've never encountered Buddhism before; they might regret having ever understood the teaching.
Having said all that, I don't think that lust – or worldly existence in general – is nearly as harmful as the classical texts say it is. But to build a Buddhist tradition that accommodates that belief, I think it's better to incorporate and harmonize non-Buddhist ideas that are not tantra. The longest-standing version of that project is probably in East Asian Buddhist traditions that incorporate Daoism; I'm trying to think through a modern Western version that incorporates Aristotle and expressive individualism. I don't think tantra is the right place to look, not for people who haven't had the years of ritual preparation that are supposed to be the prerequisite for it.
The point comes out in particular for me in something like Emily McRae's work on anger: she thinks that tantra makes for a Buddhist justification for our modern intuitions that political anger is good, which it absolutely isn't - you have to jettison your normal intuitions and prejudices first before you're ready. I have a section on that in my book manuscript (which I'm currently shopping around to publishers).