Sublime

Hume’s pluralist, sentimentalist, and naturalist approach to ethics is more promising than utilitarianism or deontology for modern moral psychology. As a first step in resuming Hume’s project, we should try to identify the taste receptors of the righteous mind.

When we do, we assume the politicians are clients in a patron–client relationship, and we assume their obligations will cloud their impartial judgment.

“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature that interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.”

By altering the ingredients of the idea menu they are exposed to, we might, in turn, minimize the dangerous inputs to the processes of belief and network updating.

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Ben-Nun Bloom indicates that popular measures of values and morality have a common genetic basis.

Clearly, we can respond intelligently to the threat posed by dangerous people without lying to ourselves about the ultimate origins of human behavior.

Milgram grasped that people are remarkably receptive to new rules in a new setting.