yo you might like Kohlbergian stuff, basically seeks to explain moral development in psychological terms at a more human level, it may help in dragging ethical considerations back into the realm of what applies to real humans
Beyond that, I have a relative who is more than interested in ethics and morality, and they generally do not like utilitarianism because 1) pleasure isn't universally good, it requires specific contexts in order to be valuable, there's no reason to value it universally and 2) making an immortal sentient computer box that can masturbate itself indefinitely does not add infinite meaning and good to the universe
Genocidal utilitatian longtermist policies are made by people who make a lot of assumptions about living, and they're probably all wrong.
For instance, there are people who consider intergalactic spacefaring civilizations millions of years in the future, and many of them are aware of several possible solutions to Fermi's Paradox, most of them involving a Great Filter. But one possible solution to Fermi's Paradox is that if a society gets wise enough, they realize that they would rather last as long as they can rather than just have continuous exponential growth. So they move towards a more steady state, and aren't really invested in whether there are foreign advanced lifeforms or not. They recognize that having 20 billion of their species is not inherently better than having 10 billion of their species; in fact, the 20 billion might be worse because it would be harder for people to recognize and appreciate each other.
There are things that are valuable beyond just how many of your species there is. Reactionary ideologies like social Darwinism contend that the individual's goal is to maximize its number of progeny (or share of descendents, in a limited world) at the expense of every other being, and that all beings are fundamentally in conflict with each other over this. It's surprising just how much thought is foundationally based on this.
Our duty is to spread and perpetuate progressive ideology, which says that individuals with differences can delight in and enrich each other, and that we can have a society that is fundamentally based on everyone looking out for everyone else, rather than each person looking out merely for themself. One thing that follows from this is that you don't have to clear out all of nature; you just take what you need to live well enough, and leave the rest as is- maybe for your viewing pleasure, maybe for science, maybe for potential useful things that emerge, maybe for a spiritual sense of primality, or maybe just because you let things be what they are wont to be.
There is a possibility of finding morality within this reality.
Is that not at least a good start?
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yo you might like Kohlbergian stuff, basically seeks to explain moral development in psychological terms at a more human level, it may help in dragging ethical considerations back into the realm of what applies to real humans
Beyond that, I have a relative who is more than interested in ethics and morality, and they generally do not like utilitarianism because 1) pleasure isn't universally good, it requires specific contexts in order to be valuable, there's no reason to value it universally and 2) making an immortal sentient computer box that can masturbate itself indefinitely does not add infinite meaning and good to the universe
Genocidal utilitatian longtermist policies are made by people who make a lot of assumptions about living, and they're probably all wrong.
For instance, there are people who consider intergalactic spacefaring civilizations millions of years in the future, and many of them are aware of several possible solutions to Fermi's Paradox, most of them involving a Great Filter. But one possible solution to Fermi's Paradox is that if a society gets wise enough, they realize that they would rather last as long as they can rather than just have continuous exponential growth. So they move towards a more steady state, and aren't really invested in whether there are foreign advanced lifeforms or not. They recognize that having 20 billion of their species is not inherently better than having 10 billion of their species; in fact, the 20 billion might be worse because it would be harder for people to recognize and appreciate each other.
There are things that are valuable beyond just how many of your species there is. Reactionary ideologies like social Darwinism contend that the individual's goal is to maximize its number of progeny (or share of descendents, in a limited world) at the expense of every other being, and that all beings are fundamentally in conflict with each other over this. It's surprising just how much thought is foundationally based on this.
Our duty is to spread and perpetuate progressive ideology, which says that individuals with differences can delight in and enrich each other, and that we can have a society that is fundamentally based on everyone looking out for everyone else, rather than each person looking out merely for themself. One thing that follows from this is that you don't have to clear out all of nature; you just take what you need to live well enough, and leave the rest as is- maybe for your viewing pleasure, maybe for science, maybe for potential useful things that emerge, maybe for a spiritual sense of primality, or maybe just because you let things be what they are wont to be.