Nature is my candidate for providing an objective basis for morality.
Moral systems that don’t exist—or soon won’t exist—might have some interest value—but generally, it is not much use being good if you are dead.
“Might is right” does not seem like a terribly good summary of nature’s fitness criteria. They are more varied than that—e.g. see the birds of paradise—which are often more beautiful than mighty.
Isn’t this a definitional dispute? I don’t think Drescher thinks some goal system is privileged in a queer way. Timeless game theory might talk about things that sound suspiciously like objective morality (all timelessly-trading minds effectively having the same compromise goal system?), but which are still mundane facts about the multiverse and counterfactually dependent on the distribution of existing optimizers.
And there are plenty of moral realists who think that there is such a thing as morality, and our ethical theories track it, and we haven’t figured out how to fully specify it yet.
I don’t think Stefan Pernar makes much sense on this topic.
David Pearce’s position is more reasonable—and not very different from mine—since pleasure and pain (loosely speaking) are part of what nature uses to motivate and reward action in living things. However, I disagree with David on a number of things—and prefer my position. For example, I am concerned that David will create wireheads.
I don’t know about Gary’s position—but the Golden Rule is a platitude that most moral thinkers would pay lip service to—though I haven’t heard it used as a foundation of moral behaviour before. Superficially, things like sexual differences make the rule not-as-golden-as-all-that.
Also: “Some examples of robust “moral realists” include David Brink, John McDowell, Peter Railton, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Michael Smith, Terence Cuneo, Russ Shafer-Landau, G.E. Moore, Ayn Rand, John Finnis, Richard Boyd, Nicholas Sturgeon, and Thomas Nagel.”
Nature is my candidate for providing an objective basis for morality.
Moral systems that don’t exist—or soon won’t exist—might have some interest value—but generally, it is not much use being good if you are dead.
“Might is right” does not seem like a terribly good summary of nature’s fitness criteria. They are more varied than that—e.g. see the birds of paradise—which are often more beautiful than mighty.
Ah, ok. That is enlightening. Of the Great Remaining Moral Realists, we have:
Tim Tyler: “The basic idea is that some moral systems are better than other—in nature’s eyes. I.e. they are more likely to exist in the universe.”
Stefan Pernar: “compassion as a rational moral duty irrespective of an agents level of intelligence or available resources.”
David Pearce: “Pleasure and pain are intrinsically motivating and objectively Good and Bad, respectively”
Gary Drescher: “Use the Golden Rule: treat others as you would have them treat you”
Drescher’s use of the Golden Rule comes from his views on acausal game-theoretic cooperation, not from moral realism.
But he furthermore thinks that this can be leveraged to create an objective morality.
Isn’t this a definitional dispute? I don’t think Drescher thinks some goal system is privileged in a queer way. Timeless game theory might talk about things that sound suspiciously like objective morality (all timelessly-trading minds effectively having the same compromise goal system?), but which are still mundane facts about the multiverse and counterfactually dependent on the distribution of existing optimizers.
When I spoke to Drescher at SS09 he seemed to imply a belief in moral realism. I’ll have to go read good and real to see what he actually says.
And there are plenty of moral realists who think that there is such a thing as morality, and our ethical theories track it, and we haven’t figured out how to fully specify it yet.
I don’t think Stefan Pernar makes much sense on this topic.
David Pearce’s position is more reasonable—and not very different from mine—since pleasure and pain (loosely speaking) are part of what nature uses to motivate and reward action in living things. However, I disagree with David on a number of things—and prefer my position. For example, I am concerned that David will create wireheads.
I don’t know about Gary’s position—but the Golden Rule is a platitude that most moral thinkers would pay lip service to—though I haven’t heard it used as a foundation of moral behaviour before. Superficially, things like sexual differences make the rule not-as-golden-as-all-that.
Also: “Some examples of robust “moral realists” include David Brink, John McDowell, Peter Railton, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Michael Smith, Terence Cuneo, Russ Shafer-Landau, G.E. Moore, Ayn Rand, John Finnis, Richard Boyd, Nicholas Sturgeon, and Thomas Nagel.”