The truth is that humans have an inherent instinct towards seeing “Good” as an objective thing, that corresponds to no reality. This includes an instinct towards doing what, thanks to both instinct and culture, humans see as “good”.
But although I am not a total supporter of Yudowksy’s moral support, he is right in that humans want to do good regardless of some “tablet in the sky”. Those who define terms try to resolve the problem of ethical questions by bypassing this instinct and referencing instead what humans actually want to do. This is contradictory to human instinct, hence the philosophical force of the Open Question argument but it is the only way to have a coherent moral system.
The alternative, as far as I can tell, would be that ANY coherent formulation of morality whatsoever could be countered with “Is it good?”.
The truth is that humans have an inherent instinct towards seeing “Good” as an objective thing, that corresponds to no reality. This includes an instinct towards doing what, thanks to both instinct and culture, humans see as “good”.
True but not very interesting. The interesting question is whether the operations of intuitive black boxes can be improved on.
But although I am not a total supporter of Yudowksy’s moral support, he is right in that humans want to do good regardless of some “tablet in the sky”.
The tablet argument is entirely misleading.
Those who define terms try to resolve the problem of ethical questions by bypassing this instinct and referencing instead what humans actually want to do. This is contradictory to human instinct, hence the philosophical force of the Open Question argument but it is the only way to have a coherent moral system.
i don’t see what you mean by that. If the function of the ethical black bx can be identified, then it can be improved on, in the way that physics physics improves on folk physics.
Those who define terms try to resolve the problem of ethical questions by bypassing this instinct and referencing instead what humans actually want to do. This is contradictory to human instinct, hence the philosophical force of the Open Question argument but it is the only way to have a coherent moral system.
The alternative, as far as I can tell, would be that ANY coherent formulation of morality whatsoever could be countered with “Is it good?”.
“ANY coherent formulation of morality whatsoever could be countered with “Is it good?”.
Exactly, if you think morality is different from goodness. That is why said “morally right” just means “what it is good for me to do.”
That is not the same as what I want at the moment. Humans have an inherent instinct towards seeing good as objective rather than as “what I want” for the same reason that we have an instinct towards seeing dogs and cats as objectively distinct, instead of just saying “dog is what I call dog, and cat is what I call cat, and if I decide to start calling them all dogs, that will be fine too.”
Saying that good is just what I happen to want is just the same as saying that dog is whatever I happen to call dog. And both positions are equally ridiculous.
Exactly, if you think morality is different from goodness. That is why said “morally right” just means “what it is good for me to do.”
Moral goodness is clearly different form, eg, hedonic goodness. Enjoying killing doesn’t mean you should kill.
Humans have an inherent instinct towards seeing good as objective rather than as “what I want”
It might be the case that humans have a mistaken view of the objectivity of morality, but it doesn’t follow from that that morality=hedonism. You can’t infer the correctness of one of N>2 theories form the wrongness of another.
we have an instinct towards seeing dogs and cats as objectively distinct, instead of just saying “dog is what I call dog, and cat is what I call cat, and if I decide to start calling them all dogs,
It is possible to misuse the terms “dog” and “cat”, so the theory of semantics you are appealing to as the only possible alternative to objective fully objective semantics is wrong as well. HInt: intersubjectivity, convention.
Saying that good is just what I happen to want is just the same as saying that dog is whatever I happen to call dog. And both positions are equally ridiculous.
I don’t know why you are bringing up hedonism. It is bad to kill even if you enjoy it; so if morally good means what it is good to do, as I say, it will be morally bad to kill even if it is pleasant to someone.
The fully intersubjective but non-objective theory of meaning that you are suggesting is also false, since if everyone all at once agrees to call all dogs and cats “dogs”, that will not mean that suddenly there is no objective difference between the things that used to be called dogs and the things that used to be called cats.
The correct theory is this:
“Dog” means something that has what is in common to the things that are normally called dogs. Notice that this incorporates inter-subjectivity and convention, since “things that are normally called dogs” means normally called that by normal people. But it also includes an objective element, namely “what is in common.”
Now someone could say, “Well, what those things have in common is that people normally call them dogs. They don’t have anything else in common. So this theory reduces to the same thing: dogs are what people call dogs.”
But they would be wrong, since obviously there are plenty of other things that dogs have in common, and where they differ from cats, which do not depend on anyone calling them anything.
The correct theory of goodness is analagous:
“Good” means something that has what is in common to the things that are normally called good. Again, this incorporates the element of convention, in “normally called good,” but it also includes an objective element, in “what is in common.”
As before, someone might say that actually they have nothing in common except the name. But again that would be wrong.
More plausibly, though, someone might say that actually what they have in common is that people desire them. And in a sense this is Eliezer’s view. But this is also wrong. Let me explain why.
One difficulty is that people are rarely wrong about whether something is a dog, but they are often wrong about whether something is good. This makes no difference to the fact that the words have meanings, but it makes it easier to see what is “normally called a dog” than “normally called good.” If someone calls something good because they are mistaken about it in some way, for example, then you cannot include that as one of the things that has what is in common, just as if someone mistakenly calls a cat a dog in some case, you cannot include that cat in determining what dogs have in common.
Just as it is not too difficult to see that dogs have some objective features that distinguish them from cats, good things have an objective feature that distinguishes them from bad things: good things tend to result in things desiring them, and bad things tend to result in things avoiding them. Now that tendency is not complete and perfect, especially because of people making mistakes. So occasionally someone desires something bad, or avoids something good. But the general tendency is for good things to result in desire, and bad things to result in avoidance.
Now if you think reality is intrinsically indifferent, as Eliezer does, then you would say that there is no such tendency: people have a tendency to desire some things and avoid others. We then call the things we tend to desire, “good,” and the things we tend to avoid, “bad,” but actually the good things have nothing in common except that we are desiring them, and the bad things have nothing in common except that we are avoiding them.
As you pointed out yourself, people have an inherent instinct to deny this position. That is because people ask, “why do I desire these things, and not others?” And they want the answer to be, “Because these are good, and the others are not.” And that answer does not make sense, unless the good things have something objective in common in addition to the fact that I desire them.
The instinct is correct, and Eliezer is wrong, and we can prove that by finding some things that the good things have in common, other than desire. The way to do that is to note that desire itself is a particular case of something more general, namely a tendency to do something. And the tendencies to do something that we find have various properties. So for example consistency is one of them—without consistency, you cannot have a tendency at all. Rocks tend to fall, and it is very consistent that they go downwards. And note that without this consistency, there would be no tendency. Likewise, tendencies will always preserve the existence of something—not necessarily of the whole existence of the thing which immediately has the tendency, but of something. Thus inertia is a tendency to motion, and it tends to preserve the amount of that movement. And we could go on. But all of these things imply that “what we desire” has various properties in common besides the fact that we desire it. And this is what it is to be good.
I don’t know why you are bringing up hedonism. It is bad to kill even if you enjoy it; so if morally good means what it is good to do, as I say, it will be morally bad to kill even if it is pleasant to someone.
So what is your theory? That the morally good is the morally good? Weren’t you criticising that approach?
“The morally good is the morally good” is vacuous.
“The morally good is the good” is subject to counteraxamples.
The fully intersubjective but non-objective theory of meaning that you are suggesting is also false, since if everyone all at once agrees to call all dogs and cats “dogs”, that will not mean that suddenly there is no objective difference between the things that used to be called dogs and the things that used to be called cats.
That is only true if you equate “wrong” with not capturing all the information. But then we would always be wrong, since we never capture all the information. There are languages where “mouse” and “rat” are translated by the same word. Speakers of those languages are not systematically denuded.
“Dog” means something that has what is in common to the things that are normally called dogs. Notice that this incorporates inter-subjectivity and convention, since “things that are normally called dogs” means normally called that by normal people. But it also includes an objective element, namely “what is in common.”
That’s rather redundant, since the idea that new sages of “dog” shoudl ave something in common with established ones is already part of the norm.
Just as it is not too difficult to see that dogs have some objective features that distinguish them from cats, good things have an objective feature that distinguishes them from bad things: good things tend to result in things desiring them, and bad things tend to result in things avoiding them.
I would say that you have the casual arrow the wrong way round there.
Also, you are, again, using “good” in a way that leads to obvious counterxamples of things that are desired or desireable but not morally good.
Now that tendency is not complete and perfect, especially because of people making mistakes. So occasionally someone desires something bad, or avoids something good. But the general tendency is for good things to result in desire, and bad things to result in avoidance.
If you could work out the difference between the mistakes and the norm, you would have a non-vacuous theory of what “morally” means in “morally good”. However, I don;t know if you are even trying to do that, since you seem wedded to the idea that the morally good is the good, period.
We then call the things we tend to desire, “good,” and the things we tend to avoid, “bad,” but actually the good things have nothing in common except that we are desiring them, and the bad things have nothing in common except that we are avoiding them.
If you want the word “good” to do all the work in your theory of moral good, yo would have that problem. If you allow the word “moral” to do some work, you don’t. The morally good has features in common , scuh as being co-operative and prosocial, that the unqualified “good” does not, and that is stil the case if the good is not an objective feature of the world.
And that answer does not make sense, unless the good things have something objective in common in addition to the fact that I desire them.
You don’t need objectivity, intersubjectivity is enough.
Also, I did not say that people would be wrong if they started calling all cats and dogs “dogs.” I said that this would not mean that there were not objective differences between the things that used to be called dogs, and the things that used to be called cats. In fact, the only reason we are able to call some dogs and some cats is that there are objective differences that allow us to distinguish them.
Not all semantics is based on objective differences. There’s no objective feature that makes someone a senator, or a particular piece of paper money..we just have social conventions, coupled with memorising the members of the set “money” or “senator”. So if you arguing that “good” must have objective characteristics because all menaingful words must denote something objective, that doesn’t work. But it is not clear you are arguing that way.
Objective differences doesn’t have to mean physical differences of the thing at the time. It is an objective fact that certain people have won elections and that others have not, for example, even if it doesn’t change them physically.
In this sense, it is true that every meaningful distinction is based on something objective, since otherwise you would not be able to make the distinction in the first place. You make the distinction by noticing that some fact is true in one case which isn’t true in the other. Or even if you are wrong, then you think that something is true in one case and not in the other, which means that it is an objective fact that you think the thing in one case and not in the other.
It is an objective fact that certain people have won elections and that others have not, for example, even if it doesn’t change them physically.
No, it’s intersubjective. Winning and elections aren’t in the laws of physics. You can’t infer objecgive from not-subjective.
In this sense, it is true that every meaningful distinction is based on something objective, since otherwise you would not be able to make the distinction in the first place
You need to be more granular about that. It is true that you can’t recognise novel members of an open-ended category (cats and dogs) except by objective features, and you cant do that because you can’t memorise all the members of such a set. But you can memorise all the members fo the set of Seanators. So objectivty is not a universal rule.
I think you might be arguing about words, in relation to whether the election is an objective fact. I don’t see what the laws of physics have to do with it. There is no rule that objective facts have to be part of the laws of physics. It is an objective fact that I am sitting in a chair right now, but the laws of physics say nothing about chairs (or about me, for that fact.)
Even if you memorize the set of Senators, you cannot recognize them without them being different from other people.
I do not know why you keep saying that I am saying that morally good is the same as good.
According to me (and this is what I think they are, not an argument) : “Morally good” is “what is good to do.”
So morally good is not the same as good. Good is general, and “Good TO DO” is morally good. So morally good is a kind of goodness, just as everyone believes.
So morally good is not the same as good. Good is general, and “Good TO DO” is morally good.
Not helping. Good to do can be hedonistically good to do, selfishly good to do, etc. If I sacrifice the lives of 100 people to save my life, that is a good ting to do from some points of view, but not what most people would call morally good.
Saying that a thing is “hedonistically good to do” means that it is good to some extent. It does not tell us whether it is good to do, period. If it is good to do, period, it is morally good. If there are other considerations more important than the pleasure, it won’t be good to do, period, and so will be morally wrong.
It’s not helpful to define the morally good as the “good, period”, without an explanation of “good, period”. You are defining a more precise term using a less precise one, which isn’t the way to go.
Suppose there is a blue house with a red spot on it. You ask, “Is that a red house?” Someone answers, “Well, there is a red spot on it.”
There is no difference if there is something bad that you could do which would be pleasant. You ask, “Is that something good to do?” Someone answers, “Well, it is hedonistically good.”
But I don’t care if there is a red spot, or if it is pleasant. I am asking if the house is red, and if it would be good to do the thing.
Those are answered in similar ways: the house is red if it is red enough that a reasonable person would say, “yes, the house is red.” And the action is morally good if a reasonable person would say, “yes, it is good to do it.”
i think that’s a fairly misleading analogy. For instance, a house’s being red is not exclusive of another ones..but my goods can conflict with another person’s.
Survival is good, you say. If I am in a position to ensure my survival by sacrificing Smith, is it morally good to do so? After all Smith’s survival is just as Good as mine.
As I said, we are asking whether it is good to do something overall. So there is no definite answer to the question about Smith. In some cases it will be good to do that, and in some cases not, depending on the situation and what exactly you mean by sacrificing Smith.
As I said, we are asking whether it is good to do something overall. So there is no definite answer to the question about Smith.
So what you call goodness cannot be equated with moral goodness, because moral goodness does need to put an overall value on act, does need to say that an act is permitted, forbidden or obligatory.
I don’t understand what you are trying to say here. Of course in a particular situation it will be good, and thus morally right, to sacrifice Smith, and in other particular situations it will not be. I just said that you cannot say in advance, and I see no reason why moral goodness would have to judge these situations in advance without taking everything into account.
The Open Question argument is theoretically flawed because it relies too much on definitions (see this website’s articles on how definitions don’t work that way, more specifically http://lesswrong.com/lw/7tz/concepts_dont_work_that_way/).
The truth is that humans have an inherent instinct towards seeing “Good” as an objective thing, that corresponds to no reality. This includes an instinct towards doing what, thanks to both instinct and culture, humans see as “good”.
But although I am not a total supporter of Yudowksy’s moral support, he is right in that humans want to do good regardless of some “tablet in the sky”. Those who define terms try to resolve the problem of ethical questions by bypassing this instinct and referencing instead what humans actually want to do. This is contradictory to human instinct, hence the philosophical force of the Open Question argument but it is the only way to have a coherent moral system.
The alternative, as far as I can tell, would be that ANY coherent formulation of morality whatsoever could be countered with “Is it good?”.
True but not very interesting. The interesting question is whether the operations of intuitive black boxes can be improved on.
The tablet argument is entirely misleading.
i don’t see what you mean by that. If the function of the ethical black bx can be identified, then it can be improved on, in the way that physics physics improves on folk physics.
Those who define terms try to resolve the problem of ethical questions by bypassing this instinct and referencing instead what humans actually want to do. This is contradictory to human instinct, hence the philosophical force of the Open Question argument but it is the only way to have a coherent moral system.
The alternative, as far as I can tell, would be that ANY coherent formulation of morality whatsoever could be countered with “Is it good?”.
“ANY coherent formulation of morality whatsoever could be countered with “Is it good?”.
Exactly, if you think morality is different from goodness. That is why said “morally right” just means “what it is good for me to do.”
That is not the same as what I want at the moment. Humans have an inherent instinct towards seeing good as objective rather than as “what I want” for the same reason that we have an instinct towards seeing dogs and cats as objectively distinct, instead of just saying “dog is what I call dog, and cat is what I call cat, and if I decide to start calling them all dogs, that will be fine too.”
Saying that good is just what I happen to want is just the same as saying that dog is whatever I happen to call dog. And both positions are equally ridiculous.
Moral goodness is clearly different form, eg, hedonic goodness. Enjoying killing doesn’t mean you should kill.
It might be the case that humans have a mistaken view of the objectivity of morality, but it doesn’t follow from that that morality=hedonism. You can’t infer the correctness of one of N>2 theories form the wrongness of another.
It is possible to misuse the terms “dog” and “cat”, so the theory of semantics you are appealing to as the only possible alternative to objective fully objective semantics is wrong as well. HInt: intersubjectivity, convention.
So what’s the correct theory?
I don’t know why you are bringing up hedonism. It is bad to kill even if you enjoy it; so if morally good means what it is good to do, as I say, it will be morally bad to kill even if it is pleasant to someone.
The fully intersubjective but non-objective theory of meaning that you are suggesting is also false, since if everyone all at once agrees to call all dogs and cats “dogs”, that will not mean that suddenly there is no objective difference between the things that used to be called dogs and the things that used to be called cats.
The correct theory is this:
“Dog” means something that has what is in common to the things that are normally called dogs. Notice that this incorporates inter-subjectivity and convention, since “things that are normally called dogs” means normally called that by normal people. But it also includes an objective element, namely “what is in common.”
Now someone could say, “Well, what those things have in common is that people normally call them dogs. They don’t have anything else in common. So this theory reduces to the same thing: dogs are what people call dogs.”
But they would be wrong, since obviously there are plenty of other things that dogs have in common, and where they differ from cats, which do not depend on anyone calling them anything.
The correct theory of goodness is analagous:
“Good” means something that has what is in common to the things that are normally called good. Again, this incorporates the element of convention, in “normally called good,” but it also includes an objective element, in “what is in common.”
As before, someone might say that actually they have nothing in common except the name. But again that would be wrong.
More plausibly, though, someone might say that actually what they have in common is that people desire them. And in a sense this is Eliezer’s view. But this is also wrong. Let me explain why.
One difficulty is that people are rarely wrong about whether something is a dog, but they are often wrong about whether something is good. This makes no difference to the fact that the words have meanings, but it makes it easier to see what is “normally called a dog” than “normally called good.” If someone calls something good because they are mistaken about it in some way, for example, then you cannot include that as one of the things that has what is in common, just as if someone mistakenly calls a cat a dog in some case, you cannot include that cat in determining what dogs have in common.
Just as it is not too difficult to see that dogs have some objective features that distinguish them from cats, good things have an objective feature that distinguishes them from bad things: good things tend to result in things desiring them, and bad things tend to result in things avoiding them. Now that tendency is not complete and perfect, especially because of people making mistakes. So occasionally someone desires something bad, or avoids something good. But the general tendency is for good things to result in desire, and bad things to result in avoidance.
Now if you think reality is intrinsically indifferent, as Eliezer does, then you would say that there is no such tendency: people have a tendency to desire some things and avoid others. We then call the things we tend to desire, “good,” and the things we tend to avoid, “bad,” but actually the good things have nothing in common except that we are desiring them, and the bad things have nothing in common except that we are avoiding them.
As you pointed out yourself, people have an inherent instinct to deny this position. That is because people ask, “why do I desire these things, and not others?” And they want the answer to be, “Because these are good, and the others are not.” And that answer does not make sense, unless the good things have something objective in common in addition to the fact that I desire them.
The instinct is correct, and Eliezer is wrong, and we can prove that by finding some things that the good things have in common, other than desire. The way to do that is to note that desire itself is a particular case of something more general, namely a tendency to do something. And the tendencies to do something that we find have various properties. So for example consistency is one of them—without consistency, you cannot have a tendency at all. Rocks tend to fall, and it is very consistent that they go downwards. And note that without this consistency, there would be no tendency. Likewise, tendencies will always preserve the existence of something—not necessarily of the whole existence of the thing which immediately has the tendency, but of something. Thus inertia is a tendency to motion, and it tends to preserve the amount of that movement. And we could go on. But all of these things imply that “what we desire” has various properties in common besides the fact that we desire it. And this is what it is to be good.
So what is your theory? That the morally good is the morally good? Weren’t you criticising that approach?
“The morally good is the morally good” is vacuous.
“The morally good is the good” is subject to counteraxamples.
That is only true if you equate “wrong” with not capturing all the information. But then we would always be wrong, since we never capture all the information. There are languages where “mouse” and “rat” are translated by the same word. Speakers of those languages are not systematically denuded.
That’s rather redundant, since the idea that new sages of “dog” shoudl ave something in common with established ones is already part of the norm.
I would say that you have the casual arrow the wrong way round there.
Also, you are, again, using “good” in a way that leads to obvious counterxamples of things that are desired or desireable but not morally good.
If you could work out the difference between the mistakes and the norm, you would have a non-vacuous theory of what “morally” means in “morally good”. However, I don;t know if you are even trying to do that, since you seem wedded to the idea that the morally good is the good, period.
If you want the word “good” to do all the work in your theory of moral good, yo would have that problem. If you allow the word “moral” to do some work, you don’t. The morally good has features in common , scuh as being co-operative and prosocial, that the unqualified “good” does not, and that is stil the case if the good is not an objective feature of the world.
You don’t need objectivity, intersubjectivity is enough.
Also, I did not say that people would be wrong if they started calling all cats and dogs “dogs.” I said that this would not mean that there were not objective differences between the things that used to be called dogs, and the things that used to be called cats. In fact, the only reason we are able to call some dogs and some cats is that there are objective differences that allow us to distinguish them.
Not all semantics is based on objective differences. There’s no objective feature that makes someone a senator, or a particular piece of paper money..we just have social conventions, coupled with memorising the members of the set “money” or “senator”. So if you arguing that “good” must have objective characteristics because all menaingful words must denote something objective, that doesn’t work. But it is not clear you are arguing that way.
Objective differences doesn’t have to mean physical differences of the thing at the time. It is an objective fact that certain people have won elections and that others have not, for example, even if it doesn’t change them physically.
In this sense, it is true that every meaningful distinction is based on something objective, since otherwise you would not be able to make the distinction in the first place. You make the distinction by noticing that some fact is true in one case which isn’t true in the other. Or even if you are wrong, then you think that something is true in one case and not in the other, which means that it is an objective fact that you think the thing in one case and not in the other.
No, it’s intersubjective. Winning and elections aren’t in the laws of physics. You can’t infer objecgive from not-subjective.
You need to be more granular about that. It is true that you can’t recognise novel members of an open-ended category (cats and dogs) except by objective features, and you cant do that because you can’t memorise all the members of such a set. But you can memorise all the members fo the set of Seanators. So objectivty is not a universal rule.
I think you might be arguing about words, in relation to whether the election is an objective fact. I don’t see what the laws of physics have to do with it. There is no rule that objective facts have to be part of the laws of physics. It is an objective fact that I am sitting in a chair right now, but the laws of physics say nothing about chairs (or about me, for that fact.)
Even if you memorize the set of Senators, you cannot recognize them without them being different from other people.
I do not know why you keep saying that I am saying that morally good is the same as good.
According to me (and this is what I think they are, not an argument) : “Morally good” is “what is good to do.”
So morally good is not the same as good. Good is general, and “Good TO DO” is morally good. So morally good is a kind of goodness, just as everyone believes.
Not helping. Good to do can be hedonistically good to do, selfishly good to do, etc. If I sacrifice the lives of 100 people to save my life, that is a good ting to do from some points of view, but not what most people would call morally good.
Saying that a thing is “hedonistically good to do” means that it is good to some extent. It does not tell us whether it is good to do, period. If it is good to do, period, it is morally good. If there are other considerations more important than the pleasure, it won’t be good to do, period, and so will be morally wrong.
It’s not helpful to define the morally good as the “good, period”, without an explanation of “good, period”. You are defining a more precise term using a less precise one, which isn’t the way to go.
Suppose there is a blue house with a red spot on it. You ask, “Is that a red house?” Someone answers, “Well, there is a red spot on it.”
There is no difference if there is something bad that you could do which would be pleasant. You ask, “Is that something good to do?” Someone answers, “Well, it is hedonistically good.”
But I don’t care if there is a red spot, or if it is pleasant. I am asking if the house is red, and if it would be good to do the thing.
Those are answered in similar ways: the house is red if it is red enough that a reasonable person would say, “yes, the house is red.” And the action is morally good if a reasonable person would say, “yes, it is good to do it.”
i think that’s a fairly misleading analogy. For instance, a house’s being red is not exclusive of another ones..but my goods can conflict with another person’s.
Survival is good, you say. If I am in a position to ensure my survival by sacrificing Smith, is it morally good to do so? After all Smith’s survival is just as Good as mine.
As I said, we are asking whether it is good to do something overall. So there is no definite answer to the question about Smith. In some cases it will be good to do that, and in some cases not, depending on the situation and what exactly you mean by sacrificing Smith.
So what you call goodness cannot be equated with moral goodness, because moral goodness does need to put an overall value on act, does need to say that an act is permitted, forbidden or obligatory.
I don’t understand what you are trying to say here. Of course in a particular situation it will be good, and thus morally right, to sacrifice Smith, and in other particular situations it will not be. I just said that you cannot say in advance, and I see no reason why moral goodness would have to judge these situations in advance without taking everything into account.