Bizarre consequences in bizarre circumstances

In strange physical circumstances, we would not be surprised by strange and unexpected behavior of a system governed by physical laws.

Under conditions a device was not designed for, we would not be surprised by odd behavior from the device.

Nor should we be surprised by bizarre behavior by an organism far outside its evolutionary niche.

Therefore, it seems that we should not be surprised by how an entity governed by moral or doxastic laws would behave in out-of-this-world moral or evidential circumstances.

In particular perhaps we should be very cautious—in ways that I have rarely been—about the lessons to be drawn from the ethics or epistemology in bizarre counterfactual stories. Instead, perhaps, we should think about how it could be that ethics or epistemology is tied to our niche, our proper environment, and we should be suspicious of Kantian-style ethics or epistemology grounded in niche- and kind-transcending principles, perhaps preferring a more Aristotelian approach with norms for behavior in our natural environment being grounded in our own nature.

Strangeness

Sometimes I am struck with how "strange" the Christian faith is—it just seems a bit incredible. But this reflection, I think, helps: we have very good reason to think that the correct physics and cosmology is going to be very strange, too. (Even if, and maybe especially if, it turns out to be quite simple and elegant.) What is prior in the order of knowledge is posterior in the order of being, the Aristotelians tell us, and so we would expect the ultimate explanations of reality to be removed from ordinary experience. I always find amusing the story of how St John Chrysostom had to preach against Arian heretics who used arguments like "If God is a Trinity, then God's essence is incomprehensible; but God's essence is comprehensible; hence God is not a Trinity." St John was preaching against the second premise.