I’m not interested in dialogue with physical anti-realists. Certain mutual assumptions are necessary to hold a meaningful conversation, and some kind of physical realism is one of them. Another example is the Past Hypothesis: we must assume the past had lower entropy, otherwise we would believe that we are Boltzmann brains and be unable to trust our memories or senses. A third example is induction: believing the universe is more likely to be lawful than not, that our past experience is at least in principle a guide to the future.
If moral realists are on the same level as physical realists—if they have no meaningful arguments for their position based on shared assumptions, but rather say “we are moral realists first and everything else follows, and if it conflicts with any other epistemological principles so much the worse for them”—then I’m not interested in talking to them (about moral realism). And I expect a very large proportion of people who agree with LW norms on rational thinking would say the same.
The physical anti-realist doesn’t see any problem in his world view either.
I’m not interested in dialogue with physical anti-realists. Certain mutual assumptions are necessary to hold a meaningful conversation, and some kind of physical realism is one of them. Another example is the Past Hypothesis: we must assume the past had lower entropy, otherwise we would believe that we are Boltzmann brains and be unable to trust our memories or senses. A third example is induction: believing the universe is more likely to be lawful than not, that our past experience is at least in principle a guide to the future.
If moral realists are on the same level as physical realists—if they have no meaningful arguments for their position based on shared assumptions, but rather say “we are moral realists first and everything else follows, and if it conflicts with any other epistemological principles so much the worse for them”—then I’m not interested in talking to them (about moral realism). And I expect a very large proportion of people who agree with LW norms on rational thinking would say the same.