Reminding moral philosophers of truths about human life which are very well known to virtually all adult human beings except moral philosophers

Just read Add Your Own Egg by Nakul Krishna and found it thought provoking.

One line of thought seems only tangentially related to the essay but here it is none-the-less.

We all face limits and the most common limit is that of time. Not only do we have limited time, we are uncertain as to the extent of that limit. Do we have three score and ten years to accomplish whatever it might be that we believe to be important to accomplish? Or do we have just a couple of decades? That difference in expectation changes the goals we set ourselves, the priorities within multiple valuable goals and the actions we are willing to undertake to achieve them. We lead a different life depending on that time expectation.

The fundamental anticipation of where the finishing line lies shapes all else. There is a time discount factor. If you have a high discount factor (i.e. a short duration remaining), then your list of priorities changes and the risks you are willing to take become higher. If you have a low time discount, you anticipate a long course to follow. Goals change in nature and prioritization and in urgency. You can afford to take incremental steps.

Where do you get your sense of time limit? Presumably a portion of that is a genetic predisposition. But how much? I suspect that culture - familial, religious, social - is to some degree a contributor, likely a significant one.

Separate from the thoughts prompted above, there were some good passages. Krishna introduces me to Bernard Williams of whom I had not heard before. Emphasis added.

Intensely successful by any conventional measure, Williams was nevertheless given to thoughts of failure. His work, he once remarked to a friend over whiskey in an American bar, had “consisted largely of reminding moral philosophers of truths about human life which are very well known to virtually all adult human beings except moral philosophers.” He sounds here a little like Wittgenstein, who famously told his most promising students to do something, anything, other than philosophy, the urge to philosophize being a kind of malady. Williams actually had contempt for “vulgar Wittgensteinianism,” which he believed “makes an academic philosophy out of denouncing academic philosophy.” Wittgenstein, however, had been right to see that “there was one problem that was everyone’s problem, an emptiness and cruel superficiality of everyday thought, which a better philosophy certainly could not cure, but which it might stand against.”

I think there is a valuable discipline of thinking in philosophy - up to a point. Beyond that it is academic positioning and self-manufactured controversies. I have employed and worked with a number of people with philosophy backgrounds and all of them were interesting and productive individuals. So different from those who undertake the long haul of making academic philosophy a career.

Another observation from Williams:

analytic argument, the philosopher’s speciality, can … play a part in sharpening perception. But the aim is to sharpen perception, to make one more acutely and honestly aware of what one is saying, thinking and feeling.

To sharpen perception, not necessarily to win the argument. To understand, not arguing as a means to control others. For whatever reason, it seems like a lot of philosophy, or perhaps, rather, philosophers end up answering the siren call of totalitarianism.