Brian, I was at a conference and couldn’t repair the blog commentary until well after Caledonian had succeeded in diverting the discussion. The comments have now been cleaned, and hence, of course, no longer appear objectionable. But if you look at some of the other comments that replied to Caledonian—itself usually a mistake—you should see quotes of the objectionable parts.
Richard, see “Invisible Frameworks”. In thinking that a universal morality is more likely to be “correct”, and that the unlikeliness of an alien species having a sense of humor suggests that humor is “incorrect”, you’re appealing to human intuitions of universalizability and moral realism. If you admit those intuitions—not directly as object-level moral propositions, but as part of the invisible framework used to judge between moral propositions—you may as well also admit intuitions like “if a moral proposition makes people happier when followed, that is a point in its favor” into the invisible framework as well. In fact, you may as well admit laughter. I see no basis for rejecting laughter and accepting universalizability.
In fact, while I accept “universalizability among humans” as a strong favorable property where it exists, I reject “universalizability among all possible minds” because this is literally impossible of fulfillment.
And moral realism is outright false, if interpreted to mean “there is an ontologically fundamental property of should-ness”, rather than “once I ask a well-specified question the idealized abstracted answer is as objective as 2 + 2 = 4″.
Laughter and happiness survive unchanged. Universalizability and moral realism must be tweaked substantially in their interpretation, to fit into a naturalist and reductionist universe. But even if this is not the case, I see no reason to grant the latter two moral instincts an absolute right-of-way over the first, as we use them within the invisible background framework to argue which moral propositions are likely to be “correct”.
If you want to grant universalizability and realism absolute right-of-way, I can but say “Why?” and “Most human minds won’t find that argument convincing, and nearly all possible minds won’t find that argument even persuasive, so isn’t it self-undermining?”
Brian, I was at a conference and couldn’t repair the blog commentary until well after Caledonian had succeeded in diverting the discussion. The comments have now been cleaned, and hence, of course, no longer appear objectionable. But if you look at some of the other comments that replied to Caledonian—itself usually a mistake—you should see quotes of the objectionable parts.
Richard, see “Invisible Frameworks”. In thinking that a universal morality is more likely to be “correct”, and that the unlikeliness of an alien species having a sense of humor suggests that humor is “incorrect”, you’re appealing to human intuitions of universalizability and moral realism. If you admit those intuitions—not directly as object-level moral propositions, but as part of the invisible framework used to judge between moral propositions—you may as well also admit intuitions like “if a moral proposition makes people happier when followed, that is a point in its favor” into the invisible framework as well. In fact, you may as well admit laughter. I see no basis for rejecting laughter and accepting universalizability.
In fact, while I accept “universalizability among humans” as a strong favorable property where it exists, I reject “universalizability among all possible minds” because this is literally impossible of fulfillment.
And moral realism is outright false, if interpreted to mean “there is an ontologically fundamental property of should-ness”, rather than “once I ask a well-specified question the idealized abstracted answer is as objective as 2 + 2 = 4″.
Laughter and happiness survive unchanged. Universalizability and moral realism must be tweaked substantially in their interpretation, to fit into a naturalist and reductionist universe. But even if this is not the case, I see no reason to grant the latter two moral instincts an absolute right-of-way over the first, as we use them within the invisible background framework to argue which moral propositions are likely to be “correct”.
If you want to grant universalizability and realism absolute right-of-way, I can but say “Why?” and “Most human minds won’t find that argument convincing, and nearly all possible minds won’t find that argument even persuasive, so isn’t it self-undermining?”