Aim high, even if you fall short

Abstract

Let’s say I believe it would be good for my health to go running every day. But I quickly realize that I don’t want to run every day, and that realistically I’ll only run a few times a month. It’s embarrassing to think of myself as being inconsistent, so perhaps I decide that running isn’t actually good for my health after all. In short, I come up with new beliefs to suit the action I was already planning to take.It’s obviously silly to come up with new “facts” for the sake of convenience. Is it any better to come up with new moral beliefs for the same reason? Sometimes I hear people say, “It seems reasonable to believe that people on the other side of the world matter as much as anyone else. But if I believed that, I should be trying a lot harder to help them, and that would require drastic changes to my life. So that’s why I don’t believe we have the same responsibility to help everyone.” This way their actions are consistent with their beliefs-or at least, their beliefs are consistent with their actions.