That’s still not the point. The entire bundle still isn’t Objective Morality, because the entire bundle is still insie one person’s head. Objective morality is what all ideal agents would converge on.
Okay. That is clearly a word problem, and you are arguing my definition.
The way you have expressed this is contradiictory. You said “it is moral”, simpliciter, rather than, it is moral-for-A, but immora-for-B. Although to do that would have made ii obvious you are talking about subjective morality. And no, it isn’t the universes fault fault. The universe allows agents to have contradictory and incompatible impulses, but it is you choice to call those implulses “moral” despite the fact that they don’t resole conflicts, or take others’ interestes into account. I wouldn’t call them that. I think the contraiction means at least one of the agent’s I-think-this-is-moral beliefs is wrong
You assumed I was being deliberately sophistic and creating confusion on purpose. After I explicitly requested twice that things be interpreted the other way around where possible. I thought that it was very clear from context that what I meant was that:
IFF It is moral-A that A kills B && It is moral-B that B is not killed by A && There are no other factors influencing moral-A or moral-B THEN: It is moral for A that A kills B and it is likewise moral for B to not be killed by A. Let the fight begin.
If you allow indiiviudal drivers to choose which side of the road to drive on, you have a uselessly subjective system of traffic law.
Please stop this. I’m seeing more and more evidence that you’re deliberately ignoring my arguments and what I’m trying to say, and that you’re just equating everything I say with “This is not a perfect system of normative ethics, therefore it is worthless”.
I have a hard time even inferring what you mean by this rather irrelevant-seeming metaphor. I’m not talking about laws and saying “The law should only punish those that act against their intuitions of morality, oh derp!”—I’m not even talking about justice or legal systems or ideal societies at all! Have I somewhere accidentally made the claim that we should just let every single human build their own model of their own system of morality with incomplete information and let chaos ensue?
Their own something. I don’t think you are going to convince an error theorist that morality exists by showing them brain scans. And the terms “consicience” and “superego” cover internal regulation of behaviour without prejudice to the philosophical issues.
Yes. And in case that wasn’t painfully obvious yet, this “something” of their own is exactly what I mean to say when I use the word “morality”!
I’m not attempting to convince anyone that “morality” “exists”. To engage further on this point I would necessitate those two to be tabooed, because I honestly have no idea what you’re getting at or what you even mean by that sentence or the one after it.
Has no bearing on the philosophy, again. All you have their is the intersection of a set of tablets.
Yup. If I agree to use your words, then yes. There’s an intersection of a set of tablets. These tablets give us some slightly iffy commandments that even the owner of the tablet would want to fix. The counterfactual edited version of the tablet after the owner has made the fixes, checked again to see if they want to fix anything, and are happy with the result, is exactly what I am pointing at here. I’ve used the words “objective morality” and “true moral preferences” and “moral algorithms” before, and all of those were pointing exactly at this. Yes, I claim that there’s nothing else here, move along.
If you want to have something more, some Objective Morality (in the sense you seem to be using that term) from somewhere else, humans are going to have to invent it. And either it’s going to be based on an intersection of edited tablets, or a lot of people are going to be really unhappy.
That is clearly a word problem, and you are arguing my definition.
I can see that it is a word problem, and I woud argue that anyone would be hard pressed to guess what you meant by “objective moral facts”.
It is moral for A that A kills B and it is likewise moral for B to not be killed by A. Let the fight begin.
What fight? You have added the “for A” and “for B” clauses that were missing last time. Are you hilding me to blame for taking you at your word?
Really? You’re going there?
You claimed a distinction in meaning between “morality” and “ethics” that doesn’t exist. Pointing that out
is useful for clarity of communication. It was not intended to prove anything at the object level.
I have a hard time even inferring what you mean by this rather irrelevant-seeming metaphor. I’m not talking about laws and saying “The law should only punish those that act against their intuitions of morality, oh derp!”—I’m not even talking about justice or legal systems or ideal societies at all! Have I somewhere accidentally made the claim that we should just let every single human build their own model of their own system of morality with incomplete information and let chaos ensue?
I don’t know how accidental it was , but your “moral for A” and “moral for B” comment does suggest that
two people can in contradiciton and yet both right.
Yes. And in case that wasn’t painfully obvious yet, this “something” of their own is exactly what I mean to say when I use the word “morality”!
I am totally aware of that. But you don’t get to call anything by any word. I was challenging the appriopriateness of making substantive claims based on a naming ceremony.
I’m not attempting to convince anyone that “morality” “exists”.
You said there were objective facts about it!
Yup. If I agree to use your words, then yes. There’s an intersection of a set of tablets. These tablets give us some slightly iffy commandments that even the owner of the tablet would want to fix. The counterfactual edited version of the tablet after the owner has made the fixes, checked again to see if they want to fix anything, and are happy with the result, is exactly what I am pointing at here. I’ve used the words “objective morality” and “true moral preferences” and “moral algorithms” before, and all of those were pointing exactly at this. Yes, I claim that there’s nothing else here, move along.
You haven’t explained that or how or why different individuals would converge on a single objective reality
by refining their intuitions. And no, EY doesn’t either.
If you want to have something more, some Objective Morality (in the sense you seem to be using that term) from somewhere else, humans are going to have to invent it.
if they haven’t already.
And either it’s going to be based on an intersection of edited tablets, or a lot of people are going to be really unhappy.
So values and intuitions are a necessary ingredient. Any number of others could be as well.
I can see that it is a word problem, and I woud argue that anyone would be hard pressed to guess what you meant by “objective moral facts”.
If individual moralities have enough of a common component that we can point to principles and values that are widely-shared among living people and societies, that would certainly count as a “fact” about morality, which we could call a “moral fact”. And that fact is certainly “objective” from the POV of any single individual, although it’s not objective at all in the naïve Western sense of “objectivity” or God’s Eye View.
You claimed a distinction in meaning between “morality” and “ethics” that doesn’t exist.
Dictionary definitions are worthless, especially in specialized domains. Does a distinction between “morality” and “ethics” (or even between “descriptive morality” and “normative morality”, if you’re committed to hopelessly confused and biased naming choices by academic philosophers) cut reality at its joints? I maintain that it does.
If individual moralities have enough of a common component that we can point to principles and values that are widely-shared among living people and societies, that would certainly count as a “fact” about morality, which we could call a “moral fact”. And that fact is certainly “objective” from the POV of any single individual, although it’s not objective at all in the naïve Western sense of “objectivity” or God’s Eye View.
And it is stll not an objective moral fact in the sense of Moral Objectivism, in the sense of a first-order fact
that makes some moral propositions mind independently true. It’s a second order fact.
Dictionary definitions are worthless, especially in specialized domains.
I’ve never seen that distinction in the specialised domain in question.
And it is stll not an objective moral fact in the sense of Moral Objectivism, in the sense of a first-order fact that makes some moral propositions mind independently true.
I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Whether there is some kind of factual (e.g. biological) base for morality is an interesting question, but it’s generally a question for psychology and science, not philosophy. People who try to argue for such a factual basis in a naïve way usually end up talking about something very different than what we actually mean by “morality” in the real world. For an unusually clear example, see Ayn Rand’s moral theory, incidentally also called “Objectivism”.
Just got bashed several times, while presenting the fragility of values idea in Oxford, for using the term “descriptive morality”. I was almost certain Eliezer used the term, hence, I was blaming him for my bashing. But it seems he doesn’t, and the above comment is the solely instance of the term I could find. I’m blaming you them! Not really though, it seems I’ve invented this term on my own—and I’m not proud of it. So far, I’ve failed to find a correlated term either in meta-ethics or in the Sequences. In my head, I was using it to mean what would be the 0 step for CEV. It could be seen as the object of study of descriptive ethics (a term that does exist), but it seems descriptive ethics uses a pluralistic or relativistic view, while I needed a term to describe the morality shared by all humans.
Just got bashed several times, while presenting the fragility of values idea in Oxford, for using the term “descriptive morality”.
So it’s even worse than I thought? When ethicists do any “descriptive” research, they are studying morality, whether they care to admit it or not. The problem with calling such things “ethics” is not so much that it implies a pluralist/relativist view—if anything, it makes the very opposite mistake: it does not take moralities seriously enough, as they exist in the real world. In common usage, the term “ethics” is only appropriate for very broadly-shared values (of course, whether such values exist after all is an empirical question), or else for the kind of consensus-based interplay of values or dispute resolution that we all do when we engage in ethical (or even moral!) reasoning in the real world.
And that fact is certainly “objective” from the POV of any single individual, although it’s not objective at all in the naïve Western sense of “objectivity” or God’s Eye View.
Sooo, not objective then. Definition debates are stupid, but there is no reason at all to be this loose with language. Seriously, this reads like a deconstructionist critique of a novel from an undergraduate majoring in English. Complete with scare quotes around words that are actually terms of art.
Well, yes. I’m using scare quotes around the terms “objective” and “fact”, precisely to point out that I am using them in a more general way than the term of art is usually defined. Nonetheless, I think this is useful, since it may help dissolve some philosophical questions and perhaps show them to be ill-posed or misleading.
Needless to say, I do not think this is “being loose with language”. And yes, sometimes I adopt a distinctive writing style in order to make a point as clearly as possible.
Okay. That is clearly a word problem, and you are arguing my definition.
You assumed I was being deliberately sophistic and creating confusion on purpose. After I explicitly requested twice that things be interpreted the other way around where possible. I thought that it was very clear from context that what I meant was that:
IFF It is moral-A that A kills B
&& It is moral-B that B is not killed by A
&& There are no other factors influencing moral-A or moral-B
THEN:
It is moral for A that A kills B and it is likewise moral for B to not be killed by A. Let the fight begin.
Really? You’re going there?
Please stop this. I’m seeing more and more evidence that you’re deliberately ignoring my arguments and what I’m trying to say, and that you’re just equating everything I say with “This is not a perfect system of normative ethics, therefore it is worthless”.
I have a hard time even inferring what you mean by this rather irrelevant-seeming metaphor. I’m not talking about laws and saying “The law should only punish those that act against their intuitions of morality, oh derp!”—I’m not even talking about justice or legal systems or ideal societies at all! Have I somewhere accidentally made the claim that we should just let every single human build their own model of their own system of morality with incomplete information and let chaos ensue?
Yes. And in case that wasn’t painfully obvious yet, this “something” of their own is exactly what I mean to say when I use the word “morality”!
I’m not attempting to convince anyone that “morality” “exists”. To engage further on this point I would necessitate those two to be tabooed, because I honestly have no idea what you’re getting at or what you even mean by that sentence or the one after it.
Yup. If I agree to use your words, then yes. There’s an intersection of a set of tablets. These tablets give us some slightly iffy commandments that even the owner of the tablet would want to fix. The counterfactual edited version of the tablet after the owner has made the fixes, checked again to see if they want to fix anything, and are happy with the result, is exactly what I am pointing at here. I’ve used the words “objective morality” and “true moral preferences” and “moral algorithms” before, and all of those were pointing exactly at this. Yes, I claim that there’s nothing else here, move along.
If you want to have something more, some Objective Morality (in the sense you seem to be using that term) from somewhere else, humans are going to have to invent it. And either it’s going to be based on an intersection of edited tablets, or a lot of people are going to be really unhappy.
I can see that it is a word problem, and I woud argue that anyone would be hard pressed to guess what you meant by “objective moral facts”.
What fight? You have added the “for A” and “for B” clauses that were missing last time. Are you hilding me to blame for taking you at your word?
You claimed a distinction in meaning between “morality” and “ethics” that doesn’t exist. Pointing that out is useful for clarity of communication. It was not intended to prove anything at the object level.
I don’t know how accidental it was , but your “moral for A” and “moral for B” comment does suggest that two people can in contradiciton and yet both right.
I am totally aware of that. But you don’t get to call anything by any word. I was challenging the appriopriateness of making substantive claims based on a naming ceremony.
You said there were objective facts about it!
You haven’t explained that or how or why different individuals would converge on a single objective reality by refining their intuitions. And no, EY doesn’t either.
if they haven’t already.
So values and intuitions are a necessary ingredient. Any number of others could be as well.
If individual moralities have enough of a common component that we can point to principles and values that are widely-shared among living people and societies, that would certainly count as a “fact” about morality, which we could call a “moral fact”. And that fact is certainly “objective” from the POV of any single individual, although it’s not objective at all in the naïve Western sense of “objectivity” or God’s Eye View.
Dictionary definitions are worthless, especially in specialized domains. Does a distinction between “morality” and “ethics” (or even between “descriptive morality” and “normative morality”, if you’re committed to hopelessly confused and biased naming choices by academic philosophers) cut reality at its joints? I maintain that it does.
And it is stll not an objective moral fact in the sense of Moral Objectivism, in the sense of a first-order fact that makes some moral propositions mind independently true. It’s a second order fact.
I’ve never seen that distinction in the specialised domain in question.
I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Whether there is some kind of factual (e.g. biological) base for morality is an interesting question, but it’s generally a question for psychology and science, not philosophy. People who try to argue for such a factual basis in a naïve way usually end up talking about something very different than what we actually mean by “morality” in the real world. For an unusually clear example, see Ayn Rand’s moral theory, incidentally also called “Objectivism”.
Just got bashed several times, while presenting the fragility of values idea in Oxford, for using the term “descriptive morality”. I was almost certain Eliezer used the term, hence, I was blaming him for my bashing. But it seems he doesn’t, and the above comment is the solely instance of the term I could find. I’m blaming you them! Not really though, it seems I’ve invented this term on my own—and I’m not proud of it. So far, I’ve failed to find a correlated term either in meta-ethics or in the Sequences. In my head, I was using it to mean what would be the 0 step for CEV. It could be seen as the object of study of descriptive ethics (a term that does exist), but it seems descriptive ethics uses a pluralistic or relativistic view, while I needed a term to describe the morality shared by all humans.
So it’s even worse than I thought? When ethicists do any “descriptive” research, they are studying morality, whether they care to admit it or not. The problem with calling such things “ethics” is not so much that it implies a pluralist/relativist view—if anything, it makes the very opposite mistake: it does not take moralities seriously enough, as they exist in the real world. In common usage, the term “ethics” is only appropriate for very broadly-shared values (of course, whether such values exist after all is an empirical question), or else for the kind of consensus-based interplay of values or dispute resolution that we all do when we engage in ethical (or even moral!) reasoning in the real world.
Sooo, not objective then. Definition debates are stupid, but there is no reason at all to be this loose with language. Seriously, this reads like a deconstructionist critique of a novel from an undergraduate majoring in English. Complete with scare quotes around words that are actually terms of art.
Well, yes. I’m using scare quotes around the terms “objective” and “fact”, precisely to point out that I am using them in a more general way than the term of art is usually defined. Nonetheless, I think this is useful, since it may help dissolve some philosophical questions and perhaps show them to be ill-posed or misleading.
Needless to say, I do not think this is “being loose with language”. And yes, sometimes I adopt a distinctive writing style in order to make a point as clearly as possible.