Richard, I don’t know anything about moral theorists, but this series of posts has helped me understand my own beliefs better than anything I’ve ever read, and they’ve coalesced mostly while reading this post. “Meta” was a concept missing from my toolbox, at least in the case of morality, and Eliezer’s pointing it out has been immensely productive for me.
behemoth, I think the point you make about the second generation is an important one. Because children are both irrational and bad at listening to their intuitions when it’s inconvenient to do so, having some form of metamorality is useful to serve as a vessel for morality. The problem is, in doing that, people bind the vessel and its contents, and can’t pour the contents into some other vessel if theirs turns out to be leaky. Which is why rationalism is important.
Richard, I don’t know anything about moral theorists, but this series of posts has helped me understand my own beliefs better than anything I’ve ever read, and they’ve coalesced mostly while reading this post. “Meta” was a concept missing from my toolbox, at least in the case of morality, and Eliezer’s pointing it out has been immensely productive for me.
behemoth, I think the point you make about the second generation is an important one. Because children are both irrational and bad at listening to their intuitions when it’s inconvenient to do so, having some form of metamorality is useful to serve as a vessel for morality. The problem is, in doing that, people bind the vessel and its contents, and can’t pour the contents into some other vessel if theirs turns out to be leaky. Which is why rationalism is important.