Ah, no, I don’t mean “objective morality” in the sense of something like a “one true, universal, metaphysical morality for all mind-designs” like the Socratic/Platonic Form of Good or any such nonsense. I just mean what I said above, something in reality that’s mind-independent and can be investigated scientifically—a definite “is” from which we can make true “ought” statements relative to that “is”.
No. The physical instantiation of a utility function is not an argument for moral realism. On the complete contrary, defining moral actions as “whatever an agents utility function says” is straight-forward, definitional, no-bones-about-it moral subjectivism.
Put it this way: the paperclip maximizer is not going to approve of your behavior.
Hank, I definitely don’t think there’s any activity that (1) can reasonably be labeled “scientific investigation” and (2) can solve the is-ought divide.
First, that essay is aimed primarily at those who think dualism is required in order to talk about morality at all—obviously that’s not the discussion we are having.
Second, the issue is not whether there are (1) universal (2) morally relevant (3) human preferences that (4) have been created by evolution. The answer to that question is yes (i.e. hunger, sexual desire). But that alone does not show that there is a universal way for humans to resolve moral dilemma.
If we study and quantify the godshatter to the point that we can precisely describe “human nature,” we aren’t guaranteed in advance to know that appeals to human nature will resolve every moral dilemma. If reference to human nature doesn’t, then evolutionary preference doesn’t prove moral realism.
I’m not sure why “universality” is really that important here. Suppose we are just talking about one person, why can’t they reduce their value judgments down to their own precisely described nature to resolve every moral dilemma they face? With a read-out of their actual terminal values defined by the godshatter, they can employ the usual consequentialist expected utility calculus to solve any question, in principle.
But that’s just a confusion between two different meanings “objective vs. subjective”.
People apparently tend to interpret “objective” as something “universal” in the sense of like some metaphysical Form of Good, as opposed to “subjective” meaning “relative to a person”. That distinction is completely stupid and wouldn’t even occur to me.
I’m using it in the sense of, something relative to a person but still “a fact of reality able to be investigated by science that is independent/prior to any of the mind’s later acquisition of knowledge/content”, versus “something that is not an independent/prior fact of reality, but rather some later invention of the mind”.
So lets clear something up: the two attributes objective/subjective and universal/relative are logically distinct. You can can have objective relativism (“What is moral is the law and the law varies from place to place.”) and subjective universalism (“What is moral is just our opinions, but we all have the same opinions”).
a fact of reality able to be investigated by science that is independent/prior to any of the mind’s later acquisition of knowledge/content”, versus “something that is not an independent/prior fact of reality, but rather some later invention of the mind”.
The attribute “objective” or “subjective” in meta-ethics refers to the status of moral judgments themselves not descriptive facts about what moral judgments people actually make or the causal/mental facts that lead people to make them. Of course it is the case that people make moral judgments, that we can observe those judgments and can learn something about the brains that make them. No one here is denying that there are objective facts about moral psychology. The entire question is about the status of the moral judgments themselves. What makes it true when I say “Murder is immoral”? If your answer references my mind your answer is subjectivist, if your answer is “nothing” than you are a non-cognitivist or an error theorist. All those camps are anti-realist camps. Objectivist answers include “the Categorical Imperative” and “immorality supervenes on human suffering”.
Is there accessible discussion out there of why one might expect real world correlation between objectivity and universality.
I see that subjective universalism is logically coherent, but I wouldn’t expect it to be true—it seems like too much of a coincidence that nothing objective requires people have the same beliefs, yet people do anyway.
Lots of things can cause a convergence of belief other than objective truth, e.g. adaptive fitness. But certainly, objectivity usually implies universality.
Ah, no, I don’t mean “objective morality” in the sense of something like a “one true, universal, metaphysical morality for all mind-designs” like the Socratic/Platonic Form of Good or any such nonsense. I just mean what I said above, something in reality that’s mind-independent and can be investigated scientifically—a definite “is” from which we can make true “ought” statements relative to that “is”.
See drethelin’s comment below.
Clippy’s code is his mind.
No. The physical instantiation of a utility function is not an argument for moral realism. On the complete contrary, defining moral actions as “whatever an agents utility function says” is straight-forward, definitional, no-bones-about-it moral subjectivism.
Put it this way: the paperclip maximizer is not going to approve of your behavior.
Hank, I definitely don’t think there’s any activity that (1) can reasonably be labeled “scientific investigation” and (2) can solve the is-ought divide.
I didn’t think you would :) I’m curious about the consensus on LW, though. But incidentally, what do you think of Thou Art Godshatter?
First, that essay is aimed primarily at those who think dualism is required in order to talk about morality at all—obviously that’s not the discussion we are having.
Second, the issue is not whether there are (1) universal (2) morally relevant (3) human preferences that (4) have been created by evolution. The answer to that question is yes (i.e. hunger, sexual desire). But that alone does not show that there is a universal way for humans to resolve moral dilemma.
If we study and quantify the godshatter to the point that we can precisely describe “human nature,” we aren’t guaranteed in advance to know that appeals to human nature will resolve every moral dilemma. If reference to human nature doesn’t, then evolutionary preference doesn’t prove moral realism.
I’m not sure why “universality” is really that important here. Suppose we are just talking about one person, why can’t they reduce their value judgments down to their own precisely described nature to resolve every moral dilemma they face? With a read-out of their actual terminal values defined by the godshatter, they can employ the usual consequentialist expected utility calculus to solve any question, in principle.
This says it better than I could.
But that’s just a confusion between two different meanings “objective vs. subjective”.
People apparently tend to interpret “objective” as something “universal” in the sense of like some metaphysical Form of Good, as opposed to “subjective” meaning “relative to a person”. That distinction is completely stupid and wouldn’t even occur to me.
I’m using it in the sense of, something relative to a person but still “a fact of reality able to be investigated by science that is independent/prior to any of the mind’s later acquisition of knowledge/content”, versus “something that is not an independent/prior fact of reality, but rather some later invention of the mind”.
So lets clear something up: the two attributes objective/subjective and universal/relative are logically distinct. You can can have objective relativism (“What is moral is the law and the law varies from place to place.”) and subjective universalism (“What is moral is just our opinions, but we all have the same opinions”).
The attribute “objective” or “subjective” in meta-ethics refers to the status of moral judgments themselves not descriptive facts about what moral judgments people actually make or the causal/mental facts that lead people to make them. Of course it is the case that people make moral judgments, that we can observe those judgments and can learn something about the brains that make them. No one here is denying that there are objective facts about moral psychology. The entire question is about the status of the moral judgments themselves. What makes it true when I say “Murder is immoral”? If your answer references my mind your answer is subjectivist, if your answer is “nothing” than you are a non-cognitivist or an error theorist. All those camps are anti-realist camps. Objectivist answers include “the Categorical Imperative” and “immorality supervenes on human suffering”.
Is there accessible discussion out there of why one might expect real world correlation between objectivity and universality.
I see that subjective universalism is logically coherent, but I wouldn’t expect it to be true—it seems like too much of a coincidence that nothing objective requires people have the same beliefs, yet people do anyway.
Lots of things can cause a convergence of belief other than objective truth, e.g. adaptive fitness. But certainly, objectivity usually implies universality.