From: Nick Bostrom (bostrom@ndirect.co.uk)
Date: Tue Dec 08 1998 - 17:40:44 MST
Alejandro Dubrovsky wrote:
> On Fri, 4 Dec 1998, Nick Bostrom wrote:
> We may
> > not know in detail and with certainty what the moral facts are (so
> > sure we'd want to assign probabilities), but it doesn't follow that
> > we know nothing about then at all. In fact, probably all the people
> > on this list know that it is wrong to torture innocent people for a
> > small amount of fun. We could no doubt write down a long list of
> > moral statements that we would all agree are true. Do you mean that
> > we all suffer from a huge illusion, and that we are all totally
> > mistaken in believing these moral propositions?
>
> I don't think you could put up many (any?) statements that even all the
> relatively like-thinking people of this list would agree to. I, for one,
> am not sure about the example moral 'fact' presented above.
You don't think there is anything wrong with torturing innocent
people for a little fun?!
I don't want to advocate any specific interpretation of moral
statements here. But however we choose to interpret such statements,
it does seem to be a fact that almost all reasonable people agree
that it is wrong (whatever that means) to torture innocent people
for a little fun. *If* there are "objective" truths in ethics (which
I am not claiming) then I think we can be fairly confident that that
is one of them.
> But what about the response coming from most of the people i talk to who
> reject the idea of avoiding death and seem disgusted with the idea of even
> living any 'longer than you should', maybe even sometimes using terms like
> 'morally wrong'?
There is much less consensus that life extension is morally wrong
(than that torturing... is wrong) . I think most people would think
it is morally ok, at least if one could convince them that
overpopulation problems could be solved. A few might still insist
that it is wrong, but they would be mistaken.
Nick Bostrom
http://www.hedweb.com/nickb n.bostrom@lse.ac.uk
Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method
London School of Economics
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