Can you give an example of what you mean by “moral knowledge”?
Murder is immoral.
Are you saying Popper would evaluate “Murder is immoral.” in the same way as “Atoms are made up of electrons and a nucleus.”? How would you test this? What would you consider a proof of it?
I prefer to leave such statements undefined, since people disagree too much on what ‘morality’ means. I am a moral realist to some, a relativist to others, and an error theorist to other others. I could prove the statement for many common non-confused definitions, though not for, for example, people who say ‘morality’ is synomnymous to ‘that which is commanded by God’, which is based on confusion but at least everyone can agree on when it is or isn’t true and not for error theorists, as both groups’ definitions make the sentence false.
Being closed minded makes ones life worse because it sabotages improvement.
In theory I could prove this sentence, but in practice I could not do this clearly, especially over the internet. It would probably be much easier for you to read the sequences, which get to this toward the end, but, depending on your answers to some of my questions, there may be an easier way to explain this.
Are you saying Popper would evaluate “Murder is immoral.” in the same way as “Atoms are made up of electrons and a nucleus.”?
Yes. One epistemology. All types of knowledge. Unified!
How would you test this?
You would not.
What would you consider a proof of it?
We don’t accept proofs of anything, we are fallibilists. We consider mathematical proofs to be good arguments though. I don’t really want to argue about those (unless you’re terribly interested. btw this is covered in the math chapter of The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch). But the point is we don’t accept anything as providing certainty or even probableness. In our terminology, nothing provides justification.
What we do instead is explain our ideas, and to criticize mistakes, and in this way to improve our ideas. This, btw, creates knowledge in the same way as evolution (replication of ideas, with variation, and selection by criticism). That’s not a metaphor or analogy by literally true.
I prefer to leave such statements undefined, since people disagree too much on what ‘morality’ means.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you had an epistemology that helped you deal with all kinds of knowledge, so you didn’t have to simply give up on applying reason to important issues like what is a good life, and what are good values?
This, btw, creates knowledge in the same way as evolution (replication of ideas, with variation, and selection by criticism). That’s not a metaphor or analogy by literally true.
Well, biological evolution is a much smaller part of conceptspace than “replication, variation, selection” and now I’m realizing that you probably haven’t read A Human’s Guide to Words which is extremely important and interesting and, while you’ll know much of it, has things that are unique and original and that you’ll learn a lot from. Please read it.
I prefer to leave such statements undefined, since people disagree too much on what ‘morality’ means.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you had an epistemology that helped you deal with all kinds of knowledge, so you didn’t have to simply give up on applying reason to important issues like what is a good life, and what are good values?
I do apply reason to those things, I just don’t use the words ‘morality’ in my reasoning process because too many people get confused. It is only a word after all.
On a side note, I am staring to like what I hear of Popper. It seems to embody an understanding of the brain and a bunch of useful advice for it. I think I disagree with some things, but on grounds that seems like the sort of thing that is accepted as motivation for the theory self-modify. Does that make sense? Anyways, it’s not Popper’s fault that there are a set of theorems that in principle remove the need for other types of thought and in practice cause big changes in the way we understand and evaluate the heuristics that are necessary because the brain is fallible and computationally limited.
Wei Dai likes thinking about how to deal with questions outside of Bayesianism’s current domain of applicability, so he might be interested in this.
Are you saying Popper would evaluate “Murder is immoral.” in the same way as “Atoms are made up of electrons and a nucleus.”? How would you test this? What would you consider a proof of it?
I prefer to leave such statements undefined, since people disagree too much on what ‘morality’ means. I am a moral realist to some, a relativist to others, and an error theorist to other others. I could prove the statement for many common non-confused definitions, though not for, for example, people who say ‘morality’ is synomnymous to ‘that which is commanded by God’, which is based on confusion but at least everyone can agree on when it is or isn’t true and not for error theorists, as both groups’ definitions make the sentence false.
In theory I could prove this sentence, but in practice I could not do this clearly, especially over the internet. It would probably be much easier for you to read the sequences, which get to this toward the end, but, depending on your answers to some of my questions, there may be an easier way to explain this.
Yes. One epistemology. All types of knowledge. Unified!
You would not.
We don’t accept proofs of anything, we are fallibilists. We consider mathematical proofs to be good arguments though. I don’t really want to argue about those (unless you’re terribly interested. btw this is covered in the math chapter of The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch). But the point is we don’t accept anything as providing certainty or even probableness. In our terminology, nothing provides justification.
What we do instead is explain our ideas, and to criticize mistakes, and in this way to improve our ideas. This, btw, creates knowledge in the same way as evolution (replication of ideas, with variation, and selection by criticism). That’s not a metaphor or analogy by literally true.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you had an epistemology that helped you deal with all kinds of knowledge, so you didn’t have to simply give up on applying reason to important issues like what is a good life, and what are good values?
Fine, what would you consider an argument for it?
Eliezer and I probably agree with you.
Well, biological evolution is a much smaller part of conceptspace than “replication, variation, selection” and now I’m realizing that you probably haven’t read A Human’s Guide to Words which is extremely important and interesting and, while you’ll know much of it, has things that are unique and original and that you’ll learn a lot from. Please read it.
I do apply reason to those things, I just don’t use the words ‘morality’ in my reasoning process because too many people get confused. It is only a word after all.
On a side note, I am staring to like what I hear of Popper. It seems to embody an understanding of the brain and a bunch of useful advice for it. I think I disagree with some things, but on grounds that seems like the sort of thing that is accepted as motivation for the theory self-modify. Does that make sense? Anyways, it’s not Popper’s fault that there are a set of theorems that in principle remove the need for other types of thought and in practice cause big changes in the way we understand and evaluate the heuristics that are necessary because the brain is fallible and computationally limited.
Wei Dai likes thinking about how to deal with questions outside of Bayesianism’s current domain of applicability, so he might be interested in this.