{"id":16786,"date":"2016-04-27T16:16:06","date_gmt":"2016-04-27T20:16:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=16786"},"modified":"2016-04-27T16:16:06","modified_gmt":"2016-04-27T20:16:06","slug":"10-theses-about-ethics-in-network-terms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=16786","title":{"rendered":"10 theses about ethics, in network terms"},"content":{"rendered":"
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  1. People hold many morally relevant opinions, some concrete and particular, some abstract and general, some tentative and others\u00a0categorical.<\/li>\n
  2. People see connections–usually logical or empirical relationships–between some pairs of their own opinions and can link\u00a0all of their opinions into\u00a0one network. (Note: these first two theses are empirical, in that I have now “mapped” several dozen students’ or colleagues’ moral worldviews, and each person\u00a0has connected all of his or her numerous moral ideas\u00a0into a single, connected network. However, this is a\u00a0smallish number of people who hardly reflect the world’s diversity.)<\/li>\n
  3. Explicit moral argumentation takes the form of citing relevant moral ideas and explaining the links\u00a0among them.<\/li>\n
  4. The network structure of a person’s moral ideas is important. For instance, some ideas may be\u00a0particularly central to the network or distant from each other.\u00a0These properties affect\u00a0our conclusions and behaviors. (Note: this is an empirical thesis for which I do not<\/em> yet have adequate data. There are at least two rival theses. If people reason like classical utilitarians or rather simplistic Kantians, then they consistently apply one algorithm in all cases, and network analysis is irrelevant.\u00a0Network analysis is also irrelevant if\u00a0people make\u00a0moral judgments because of unconscious assumptions and then\u00a0rationalize them post hoc<\/em> by inventing\u00a0reasons.)<\/li>\n
  5. Not all of\u00a0our\u00a0ideas are clearly defined, and many of the connections that we see among our ideas are not logically or empirically rigorous arguments. They are loose empirical generalizations or rough implications.<\/li>\n
  6. It is better to have a large, complex map than a simple one that would meet stricter tests of logical and empirical rigor and clarity. It is better to preserve most of a typical person’s\u00a0network because each idea and connection captures valid experiences and serves as a hedge against self-interest and fanaticism. The emergent social world is so complex that human beings, with our cognitive limits, cannot develop adequate networks of moral ideas that are clear and rigorous.<\/li>\n
  7. Our ideas are not individual; they are relational. We hold ideas and make connections because of what others have proposed, asked, made salient, or provoked from us. A person’s moral map at a given moment is a piece of a community’s constantly evolving map.<\/li>\n
  8. We begin with the moral ideas and connections that we are taught by our community and culture. We cannot be blamed (or praised) for their content. But we are responsible for interacting responsively with people who have had different experiences. Therefore,\u00a0discursive virtues are paramount.<\/li>\n
  9. Discursive virtues can be defined in network terms. For instance, a person whose network is centralized around one nonnegotiable idea cannot deliberate, and neither can a person whose ideas are disconnected. \u00a0If two people interact but their networks remain unchanged, that is a sign of unresponsiveness.<\/li>\n
  10. It is a worthwhile exercise to map one’s own current moral ideas as a network, reflect on both its content and its form, and interact with others who do the same.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    People hold many morally relevant opinions, some concrete and particular, some abstract and general, some tentative and others\u00a0categorical. People see connections–usually logical or empirical relationships–between some pairs of their own opinions and can link\u00a0all of their opinions into\u00a0one network. (Note: these first two theses are empirical, in that I have now “mapped” several dozen students’ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,5,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-moral-network-mapping","category-philosophy","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16786"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16808,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16786\/revisions\/16808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}