This talk about metaethics is trying to justify building castles in the clouds by declaring the foundation to be supported by the roof. It doesn’t deal with the fundamental problem at all—it makes it worse.
Caledonian, I don’t want to speak for Eliezer. But my contention, at least, is that the fundamental problem is insoluble. I claim, not that this particular castle has a solid foundation, but that there exist no solid foundations, and that anywhere you think you’ve found solid earth there’s actually a cloud somewhere beneath it. The fact that you’re reacting so strongly makes me think you’re interpreting Eliezer as saying what I believe. Similarly,
Why should we care about a moral code that Eliezer has arbitrarily chosen to call right? What relevance does this have to anything?
There’s no particular reason we should care about a moral code Eliezer has chosen. You should care about the moral code you have arbitrarily chosen. I claim, and I think Eliezer would too, that there will be a certain amount of overlap because you’re both human (just as you both buy into Occam because you’re both human). But we couldn’t give, say, a pebblesorter any reason to care about Eliezer’s moral code.
Larry D’ana:
Is anyone who does not believes in universally compelling arguments a relativist?
Is anyone who does not believe that morality is ontologically primitive a relativist?
Yeah, pretty much.
If there are no universally compelling arguments, then there’s no universally compelling moral code. Which means that whatever code compels you has to compel relative to who you are; thus it’s a relativist position.
Eliezer tries to get around this by saying that he has this code he can state (to some low degree of precision), and everyone can objectively agree on whether or not some action comports with this code. Or at least that perfect Bayesian superintelligences could all agree. (I’m not entirely sold on that, but we’ll stipulate). I claim, though, that this isn’t the way most people (including most of us) use the words ‘morality’ and ‘right’; I think that if you want your usage to comport with everyone else’s, you would have to say that the pebblesorters have ‘a’ moral code, and that this moral code is “Stack pebbles in heaps whose sizes are prime numbers.”
In other words, in general usage a moral code is a system of rules that compels an agent to action (and has a couple other properties I haven’t figured out how to describe without self-reference). A moral absolutist claims that there exists such a system of rules that is rightly binding and compelling to all X, where X is usually some set like “all human beings” or “all self-aware agents.” (Read e.g. Kant who claimed that the characteristic of a moral rule is that it is categorically binding on all rational minds). But Eliezer and I claim that there are no universally compelling arguments of any sort. Thus in particular there are no universally compelling injunctions to act, and thus no absolute moral code. Instead, the injunction to act that a particular agent finds compelling varies with the identity of the agent; thus ‘morality’ is relative to the agent. And thus I’m a moral relativist.
Now, it’s possible that you could get away with restricting X to “human beings”; if you then claimed that humans had enough in common that the same moral code was compelling to all of them, you could plausibly reclaim moral objectivism. But I think that claim is clearly false; Eliezer seems to have rejected it (or at least refused to defend it) as well. So we don’t get even that degree of objectivity; the details of each person’s moral code depend on that person, and thus we have a relative standard. This is what has Caledonian’s knickers in such a twist.
This talk about metaethics is trying to justify building castles in the clouds by declaring the foundation to be supported by the roof. It doesn’t deal with the fundamental problem at all—it makes it worse.
Caledonian, I don’t want to speak for Eliezer. But my contention, at least, is that the fundamental problem is insoluble. I claim, not that this particular castle has a solid foundation, but that there exist no solid foundations, and that anywhere you think you’ve found solid earth there’s actually a cloud somewhere beneath it. The fact that you’re reacting so strongly makes me think you’re interpreting Eliezer as saying what I believe. Similarly,
Why should we care about a moral code that Eliezer has arbitrarily chosen to call right? What relevance does this have to anything?
There’s no particular reason we should care about a moral code Eliezer has chosen. You should care about the moral code you have arbitrarily chosen. I claim, and I think Eliezer would too, that there will be a certain amount of overlap because you’re both human (just as you both buy into Occam because you’re both human). But we couldn’t give, say, a pebblesorter any reason to care about Eliezer’s moral code.
Larry D’ana: Is anyone who does not believes in universally compelling arguments a relativist?
Is anyone who does not believe that morality is ontologically primitive a relativist?
Yeah, pretty much.
If there are no universally compelling arguments, then there’s no universally compelling moral code. Which means that whatever code compels you has to compel relative to who you are; thus it’s a relativist position.
Eliezer tries to get around this by saying that he has this code he can state (to some low degree of precision), and everyone can objectively agree on whether or not some action comports with this code. Or at least that perfect Bayesian superintelligences could all agree. (I’m not entirely sold on that, but we’ll stipulate). I claim, though, that this isn’t the way most people (including most of us) use the words ‘morality’ and ‘right’; I think that if you want your usage to comport with everyone else’s, you would have to say that the pebblesorters have ‘a’ moral code, and that this moral code is “Stack pebbles in heaps whose sizes are prime numbers.”
In other words, in general usage a moral code is a system of rules that compels an agent to action (and has a couple other properties I haven’t figured out how to describe without self-reference). A moral absolutist claims that there exists such a system of rules that is rightly binding and compelling to all X, where X is usually some set like “all human beings” or “all self-aware agents.” (Read e.g. Kant who claimed that the characteristic of a moral rule is that it is categorically binding on all rational minds). But Eliezer and I claim that there are no universally compelling arguments of any sort. Thus in particular there are no universally compelling injunctions to act, and thus no absolute moral code. Instead, the injunction to act that a particular agent finds compelling varies with the identity of the agent; thus ‘morality’ is relative to the agent. And thus I’m a moral relativist.
Now, it’s possible that you could get away with restricting X to “human beings”; if you then claimed that humans had enough in common that the same moral code was compelling to all of them, you could plausibly reclaim moral objectivism. But I think that claim is clearly false; Eliezer seems to have rejected it (or at least refused to defend it) as well. So we don’t get even that degree of objectivity; the details of each person’s moral code depend on that person, and thus we have a relative standard. This is what has Caledonian’s knickers in such a twist.
Kenny: exactly. That’s why we’re morally relative.