Monday, November 13, 2006
At Marginal Revolutions, Alex has independently rediscovered a technique I used to use 25 years ago when I was a bum pretending to be a philosophy grad student.
Any useful ethical theory can be expressed in terms of people sitting down to order either chocolate or vanilla ice cream.
My professor had a pet theory that seemd to boil down to the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
My disproof went like this: John likes chocolate. Mary likes vanilla. There are two servings left, one of each. John gives the chocolate to Mary, since what he would have her do is give the chocolate to him. Mary gives him the vanilla, since it's what she would have him do. The result seems less than optimum, and is intended as a criticsm of the professor's theory.
[All that was before I was vegan.]
What's important about this technique is not whether I was right or wrong above - it's that ice cream can be used to model and test ethical theories.
Alex uses the ice cream example as a way of introducing his topic, in which some actual empirical research was done, showing why previous research overstated "fairness" as way of describing how people allocate resources. What they really want is to be perceived as fair. Interesting, maybe even true, but the significance of the post is the way he uses ice cream to illustrate the points. If a vegan substitute (dark chocolate?) can be found, this might be a way to do some low cost empirical experiments.
Any useful ethical theory can be expressed in terms of people sitting down to order either chocolate or vanilla ice cream.
My professor had a pet theory that seemd to boil down to the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
My disproof went like this: John likes chocolate. Mary likes vanilla. There are two servings left, one of each. John gives the chocolate to Mary, since what he would have her do is give the chocolate to him. Mary gives him the vanilla, since it's what she would have him do. The result seems less than optimum, and is intended as a criticsm of the professor's theory.
[All that was before I was vegan.]
What's important about this technique is not whether I was right or wrong above - it's that ice cream can be used to model and test ethical theories.
Alex uses the ice cream example as a way of introducing his topic, in which some actual empirical research was done, showing why previous research overstated "fairness" as way of describing how people allocate resources. What they really want is to be perceived as fair. Interesting, maybe even true, but the significance of the post is the way he uses ice cream to illustrate the points. If a vegan substitute (dark chocolate?) can be found, this might be a way to do some low cost empirical experiments.
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