Affective Altruism

Affective Altruism

 

Redirecting another post over here because I apparently have no willpower and could not stop myself from piling on to it until the end product became unacceptably oversized for YouTube’s community tab. It’s fine though, this one probably merits a spot on here anyway.

 

Will MacAskill back on the Making Sense podcast:

https://samharris.org/podcasts/228-doing-good/

Too much of this turned out to be a rerun of their 2016 edition, so I’ll spare you a retelling of the more substantive objections I’ve already aired in the wake of that first conversation. Right now I want to delve into an altogether different observation that keeps bugging me about these two. I’m finally able to recall how the same something managed to irritate me during the first go-round as well. It’s one of those vague somethings that never fully crystallized for me, until a few days ago.

 

Islamic Hybridism

This was originally meant to be a Community Post for my YouTube channel, but it ran long. It’s a good deal shorter than the usual essay-length post reserved for Extensive Arguments, and though I have two unfinished Sequence Trilogies that have been pending for eons, and embarrassingly so, I’ll publish this too-long-for-the-community piece over here anyway.

The post being moved here started out as a Poll soliciting answers to a deceivingly simple question. As with my other polls, I added a few short lines to explain the broader context of the query, only to then catch myself snowballing the explanations in order to make doubly sure that no one downplays the gravity of what's being queried. So much for that.

Motivation for the Poll: The string of murders in France and elsewhere in Europe over the last two months, particularly the aftermath-spurred debates over how to solve or mitigate the problem of Islam-inspired violence legally or socially, while avoiding overkill (i.e. human rights violations). To those who have decided that there’s no overkill, or that there’s no point in worrying about overkill, you're probably not the target audience, and I imagine you’re in for a disappointing read.

The intended poll:

 

Non-muslims familiar with the Qur’an are correct to rank-order Muslims in the following way, morally speaking:

 

Cultural Muslims > Moderate Muslims > Devout Muslims > Islamists > Jihadists

 

A: Agree

B: Disagree

C: Agree in theory, but this specific ranking is wrong

D: Ambivalent (on non-empirical grounds / i.e. the value of non-judgmentalism)

E: Indecisive (because we lack some pertinent facts / still pro-judgmentalism)

To answer contextually, you will need to keep reading. (Sorry)

Electoral Fideism

And now for a terribly delayed post in what seems like an unending streak of terribly delayed posts in this space. Regrettably, I have succumbed to another disruption of a three part sequence project which I intended to finish long ago. The sequence will be completed... wait for it... In The Future. 

Until then, it’s Me vs. SkidRowRadio in… This Time, It’s Electoral.


Some of this will feel dated. The spar I am revisiting, screencapping and hopefully concluding was instigated in early March, so in the thick of Super Tuesday when the American primaries were hotly and then lukewarmly contested. I would normally self-cringe for taking a time-sensitive topic and putting the finishing touches on it roughly a month after its time-sensitivity expires. And I am self-cringing, believe me, just not as strongly as I might need to. This is because I tamely believe the lateness has an out: cyber-normies won’t be exposed to this. People who experience time in internet years where days are weeks and months are years, will not be reading this.


Abnormal readers — who might be thought to represent the old normal, where “a month ago” does not absurdly feel like ancient history — are the prospected readers. My clash with SkidRowRadio (henceforth SRR) initially centered on decision-theoretical issues fraught with probabilities and uncertainties. Few of these issues remain unknown to us as of my writing this [2020-04-14]. But the developments and later knowledge (i.e. Bernie endorsing Biden) don’t make those disagreements any less steep or unworthy of reposting. SRR's responses to my criticisms, and other radical mishandlings of similar criticisms, remain, put amicably, instructive.


All this to say that I am cautiously optimistic that the disciplined reader is the one who won’t care how non-current or non-recent this technically current-events themed post is. If you do care and are wondering why I didn’t have it up sooner, skip to the bottom for a psychological sob story from me giving a detailed account of what holds me up these days. Otherwise head straight to content.

Also, I created a (hopefully helpful) visual that summarizes what I'm battling against here.

Change Against The Machine

Have philosophers developed an adequate taxonomy for interrogating the most mature divides and zigzags on life and existence as bearers of disvalue or value? If you believe that they have, tell me what you think that is. For instance, which descriptor best summarizes your outlook on life? Which descriptor have your mortal enemies adopted? Are these terms prodded by assessments of lives as they are in actuality, or are they licensed to go a step further by assessing matters as they might be, however plausibly or implausibly?

What’s a complete outlook on life anyway? Do speakers owe their audiences a theory of meaning, or are they justified in remaining silent about the arguably hazardous possibility of meaninglessness despite their eagerness to advance a lucid theory of value/disvalue? Would subdividing 'meaning' along cosmic vs. terrestrial lanes make any real difference?

Should armchair-derived outlooks have their own labels, or are they better kept overshadowed by the formal and orderly labels philosophical evaluators have come to depend on?

If you think this terminology can be covered by anti-natalism and natalism, or by anti-mortalism and pro-mortalism, or by the more conventional and general standoffs between pessimism and optimism, I humbly ask that you rethink those picks as you read through this.

Constraints On Procreative Wrongness

Global anti-natalists part ways with local ones in two important respects; (i) in contending that the overriding harms of existence bear on all birthed subjects rather than on some or most ones, and (ii) by believing that moral criticisms of procreative acts can be levied at deliberative agents broadly considered, rather than narrowing the pool of censurable agents to their peer group only, and/or to those who are similarly situated to themselves only.

Here my deployment of global vs. local anti-natalism focuses on the divisions captured in (ii), where moral judgment takes center stage. While local anti-natalists understand moral scrutiny of procreative acts to be position-relative in principle, global counterparts take their admonishments to be position-neutral broadly speaking, and perhaps even in principle. Birthing is a blamable act, according to the global group, insofar as the deliberative agent who births does so volitionally / non-coercively / knowingly. For the local group, standards for blameworthiness must undergo a further probing, leading to their thinning, owing to position-derived wrong-making features and other contingencies.