I think anyone making claims that they’re on the side of “objective” morality is hopelessly confused and making a category error.
Where exactly does the objectivity arise from? At most, a moral memeplex can simply become so omnipresent and universal that people take it for granted, but that’s not the same as being actually objective.
I can look around and see no evidence of morality being handed down from the heavens (and even if it was, that would be highly suspect. I deny even a hypothetical ASI or God himself the right to make that determination, any more than they can make 2+2=3 by fiat).
At the end of the day, there’s nothing to hide behind when subject to the Socratic Method, at one point or another, you simply need to plant your feet in the ground and declare that it is so because you say so.
At most there are axioms that are convenient to hold, or socially useful, or appealing to the same mammalian brain, in the manner that monkeys and dogs hate unfairness or show kin preference.
To look for something fundamental below that is foolishness, because there’s no reason to think that such a grounding even exists.
Mind you, being a moral relativist doesn’t stop me from holding onto the supremacy of my own morals, I just don’t need the mental comfort of having an ineffable objectivity to prop that up.
Perhaps at the end of the day there’ll be a memeplex that’s hyperoptimized for human brains, such that we can’t help but be attracted to it, but that’s more from it being convincing than it being true.
I think anyone making claims that they’re on the side of “objective” morality is hopelessly confused and making a category error.
Where exactly does the objectivity arise from? At most, a moral memeplex can simply become so omnipresent and universal that people take it for granted, but that’s not the same as being actually objective.
I can look around and see no evidence of morality being handed down from the heavens (and even if it was, that would be highly suspect. I deny even a hypothetical ASI or God himself the right to make that determination, any more than they can make 2+2=3 by fiat).
At the end of the day, there’s nothing to hide behind when subject to the Socratic Method, at one point or another, you simply need to plant your feet in the ground and declare that it is so because you say so.
At most there are axioms that are convenient to hold, or socially useful, or appealing to the same mammalian brain, in the manner that monkeys and dogs hate unfairness or show kin preference.
To look for something fundamental below that is foolishness, because there’s no reason to think that such a grounding even exists.
Mind you, being a moral relativist doesn’t stop me from holding onto the supremacy of my own morals, I just don’t need the mental comfort of having an ineffable objectivity to prop that up.
Perhaps at the end of the day there’ll be a memeplex that’s hyperoptimized for human brains, such that we can’t help but be attracted to it, but that’s more from it being convincing than it being true.
See Probability is Subjectively Objective, The Meaning of Right. (Probably only makes sense in context of the dependencies, and the metaethics sequence is notoriously misunderstood.)