The best way to tell is to read the metaethics textbook and see what happens. If it turns out you need a crash course on (say) utilitarian thinking, you can always do that and then return to metaethics.
What is your reason for wanting to read a metaethics textbook? I ask because the most obvious reason (I think) is “because I want to live a good life, so I want to figure out what constitutes living a good life, and for that I need a coherent system of ethics” but I’d have thought that most people thinking in those terms and inclined to read philosophy textbooks would already have looked into (at least) whatever variety of ethics they find most congenial.
Good point. I ordered it yesterday, and it’s supposed to be an easy introduction, so we’ll see what happens.
Well it seems to me that there are so many different schools of normative ethics, that unless we’re all normative moral relativists (I don’t think we are), most people must be wrong about normative ethics. I’ve seen claims here that mainstream metaethics has it all wrong, I just found out that lukeprog’s got his own metaethics sequence, and some of the things that he claims to resolve seem like they would have profound implications for normative ethics. I guess I feel like I’m saving myself time not reading about a million different theories of normative ethics (kind of like I think I’m saving myself time not reading about a million different types of psychotherapy, unless it’s for some sort of test) and just learning about where the mainstream field of metaethics is, and then seeing where Eliezer and Luke differ from it, and if I agree.
Is it crazy to want to have some idea of what ethical statements mean before I use them as a justification for my behavior? That you say “whatever variety of ethics they find most congenial,” makes me think that you might not think it is that crazy. And I mean, I’m at least not murdering anyone right now; I have time for this. And if I don’t ever take the time, then I could end up becoming the dreaded worse-than-useless.
I’m also curious about FAI so I’m generally schooling myself in LW-related stuff, hence the books on logic and AI and ethics. I’m working towards others as well.
The best way to tell is to read the metaethics textbook and see what happens. If it turns out you need a crash course on (say) utilitarian thinking, you can always do that and then return to metaethics.
What is your reason for wanting to read a metaethics textbook? I ask because the most obvious reason (I think) is “because I want to live a good life, so I want to figure out what constitutes living a good life, and for that I need a coherent system of ethics” but I’d have thought that most people thinking in those terms and inclined to read philosophy textbooks would already have looked into (at least) whatever variety of ethics they find most congenial.
Good point. I ordered it yesterday, and it’s supposed to be an easy introduction, so we’ll see what happens.
Well it seems to me that there are so many different schools of normative ethics, that unless we’re all normative moral relativists (I don’t think we are), most people must be wrong about normative ethics. I’ve seen claims here that mainstream metaethics has it all wrong, I just found out that lukeprog’s got his own metaethics sequence, and some of the things that he claims to resolve seem like they would have profound implications for normative ethics. I guess I feel like I’m saving myself time not reading about a million different theories of normative ethics (kind of like I think I’m saving myself time not reading about a million different types of psychotherapy, unless it’s for some sort of test) and just learning about where the mainstream field of metaethics is, and then seeing where Eliezer and Luke differ from it, and if I agree.
Is it crazy to want to have some idea of what ethical statements mean before I use them as a justification for my behavior? That you say “whatever variety of ethics they find most congenial,” makes me think that you might not think it is that crazy. And I mean, I’m at least not murdering anyone right now; I have time for this. And if I don’t ever take the time, then I could end up becoming the dreaded worse-than-useless.
I’m also curious about FAI so I’m generally schooling myself in LW-related stuff, hence the books on logic and AI and ethics. I’m working towards others as well.