I’ve been veryclearmanytimes that ‘austere metaethics’ is for clearing up certain types of confusions, but won’t do anything to solve FAI, which is why we need ‘empathic metaethics’.
I was discussing that particular comment, not rehashing the intention behind ‘austere metaethics’.
More specifically, you made a statement “We can’t wait around for metaethics and decision theory to be solved.” It’s not clear to me what purpose is being served by what alternative action to “waiting around for metaethics to be solved”. It looks like you were responding to Wei’s invitation to justify the use of word “meaning” instead of “guess”, but it’s not clear how your response relates to that question.
Like I said over here, I’m using the concept of ‘meaning’ from linguistics. I’m hoping that fewer people are confused by my use of ‘meaning’ as employed in the field that studies meaning than if I had used ‘meaning’ in a more narrow and less standard way, like Wei Dai’s. Perhaps I’m wrong about that, but I’m not sure.
My comment above about how “we have to act in the world now” gives one reason why, I suspect, the linguist’s sense of ‘meaning’ includes stipulated meaning, and why stipulated meaning is so common.
In any case, I think you and Wei Dai have helped me think about how to be more clear to more people by adding such clarifications as this.
You think this applies to figuring out decision theory for FAI? If not, how is that relevant in this context?
Vladimir,
I’ve been very clear many times that ‘austere metaethics’ is for clearing up certain types of confusions, but won’t do anything to solve FAI, which is why we need ‘empathic metaethics’.
I was discussing that particular comment, not rehashing the intention behind ‘austere metaethics’.
More specifically, you made a statement “We can’t wait around for metaethics and decision theory to be solved.” It’s not clear to me what purpose is being served by what alternative action to “waiting around for metaethics to be solved”. It looks like you were responding to Wei’s invitation to justify the use of word “meaning” instead of “guess”, but it’s not clear how your response relates to that question.
Like I said over here, I’m using the concept of ‘meaning’ from linguistics. I’m hoping that fewer people are confused by my use of ‘meaning’ as employed in the field that studies meaning than if I had used ‘meaning’ in a more narrow and less standard way, like Wei Dai’s. Perhaps I’m wrong about that, but I’m not sure.
My comment above about how “we have to act in the world now” gives one reason why, I suspect, the linguist’s sense of ‘meaning’ includes stipulated meaning, and why stipulated meaning is so common.
In any case, I think you and Wei Dai have helped me think about how to be more clear to more people by adding such clarifications as this.