This sounds like ethical subjectivism (that ethical sentences are propositions about the attitudes of people). I’m quite amenable to ethical subjectivism but it’s an anti-realist position.
OK, suppose that this is an anti-realism position. People’s attitudes exist, but this isn’t what we mean by morality existing. Is that how it follows as an anti-realist position?
I was intrigued by a comment you made some time ago that you are not a realist, so you wonder what it is that everyone is arguing about. What is your position on ethical subjectivism?
OK, suppose that this is an anti-realism position. People’s attitudes exist, but this isn’t what we mean by morality existing. Is that how it follows as an anti-realist position?
So here is a generic definition of realism (in general, not for morality in particular
a, b, and c and so on exist, and the fact that they exist and have properties such as F-ness, G-ness, and H-ness is (apart from mundane empirical dependencies of the sort sometimes encountered in everyday life) independent of anyone’s beliefs, linguistic practices, conceptual schemes, and so on.
E.g. A realist position on ghosts doesn’t include the position that “ghost” is a kind of hallucination people have even though there is something that exists there.
What is your position on ethical subjectivism?
I think it is less wrong than every variety of moral realism but I am unsure if moral claims are reports of subjective attitudes (subjectivism) or expressions of subjective attitudes (non-cognitivism). But I don’t think that distinction matters very much.
Luckily, I live in a world populated by entities who mostly concur with my attitudes regarding how the universe should be. This lets us cooperate and formalize procedures for determining outcomes that are convivial to our attitudes. But these attitudes are the result of a cognitive structure determined by natural selection and culture transmission, altered by reason and language. As such, they contain all manner of kludgey artifacts and heuristics that respond oddly to novel circumstances. So I find it weird that anyone thinks they can be described by something like preference utilitarianism of Kantian deontology. Those are the kind of parsimonious, elegant theories that we expect to find governing natural laws, not culturally and biologically evolved structures. In fact, Kant was emulating Newton.
Attitudes produced by human brains are going to be contextually inconsistent, subject to framing effects, unable to process most novel inputs, cluttered etc. What’s more, since our attitudes aren’t produced by a single, universal utility function but a cluster of heuristics, most moral disagreements are going to be the result of certain heuristics being more dominant in some people than others. That makes these grand theories about these attitudes silly to argue about: positions aren’t determined by things in the universe or by logic. They’re determined by the cognitive styles of individuals and the cultural conditioning they receive. Most of Less Wrong is robustly consequentialist because most people here share a particular cognitive style—we don’t have any grand insights into reality when it comes to normative theory.
E.g. A realist position on ghosts doesn’t include the position that “ghost” is a kind of hallucination people have even though there is something that exists there.
I see, thanks for that distinction! I now need to reread parts of the metaethics sequence since I believe I came away with the thesis that morality is real in this sense… That is, that morality is real because we have bits of code (evolutionary, mental, etc) that output positive or negative feelings about different states of the universe and this code is “real” even if the positive and negative doesn’t exist external to that code.
So I find it weird that anyone thinks they can be described by something like preference utilitarianism of Kantian deontology. Those are the kind of parsimonious, elegant theories that we expect to find governing natural laws, not culturally and biologically evolved structures.
I agree...
That makes these grand theories about these attitudes silly to argue about: positions aren’t determined by things in the universe or by logic. They’re determined by the cognitive styles of individuals and the cultural conditioning they receive.
and I don’t disagree with this. I do hope/half expect that there should be some patterns to our attitudes, not as simplistic as natural laws but perhaps guessable to someone who thought about it the right way.
Thanks for describing your positions in more detail.
OK, suppose that this is an anti-realism position. People’s attitudes exist, but this isn’t what we mean by morality existing. Is that how it follows as an anti-realist position?
I was intrigued by a comment you made some time ago that you are not a realist, so you wonder what it is that everyone is arguing about. What is your position on ethical subjectivism?
So here is a generic definition of realism (in general, not for morality in particular
E.g. A realist position on ghosts doesn’t include the position that “ghost” is a kind of hallucination people have even though there is something that exists there.
I think it is less wrong than every variety of moral realism but I am unsure if moral claims are reports of subjective attitudes (subjectivism) or expressions of subjective attitudes (non-cognitivism). But I don’t think that distinction matters very much.
Luckily, I live in a world populated by entities who mostly concur with my attitudes regarding how the universe should be. This lets us cooperate and formalize procedures for determining outcomes that are convivial to our attitudes. But these attitudes are the result of a cognitive structure determined by natural selection and culture transmission, altered by reason and language. As such, they contain all manner of kludgey artifacts and heuristics that respond oddly to novel circumstances. So I find it weird that anyone thinks they can be described by something like preference utilitarianism of Kantian deontology. Those are the kind of parsimonious, elegant theories that we expect to find governing natural laws, not culturally and biologically evolved structures. In fact, Kant was emulating Newton.
Attitudes produced by human brains are going to be contextually inconsistent, subject to framing effects, unable to process most novel inputs, cluttered etc. What’s more, since our attitudes aren’t produced by a single, universal utility function but a cluster of heuristics, most moral disagreements are going to be the result of certain heuristics being more dominant in some people than others. That makes these grand theories about these attitudes silly to argue about: positions aren’t determined by things in the universe or by logic. They’re determined by the cognitive styles of individuals and the cultural conditioning they receive. Most of Less Wrong is robustly consequentialist because most people here share a particular cognitive style—we don’t have any grand insights into reality when it comes to normative theory.
I see, thanks for that distinction! I now need to reread parts of the metaethics sequence since I believe I came away with the thesis that morality is real in this sense… That is, that morality is real because we have bits of code (evolutionary, mental, etc) that output positive or negative feelings about different states of the universe and this code is “real” even if the positive and negative doesn’t exist external to that code.
I agree...
and I don’t disagree with this. I do hope/half expect that there should be some patterns to our attitudes, not as simplistic as natural laws but perhaps guessable to someone who thought about it the right way.
Thanks for describing your positions in more detail.