My point is that NMJablonski’s request is about as reasonable as demanding that someone arguing for the existence of a “Correct Theory of Physics” provide a clear reductionist description of what one means while tabooing words like ‘physics’, ‘reality’, ‘exists’, ‘experience’, etc.
No, the reductionist description of the Correct Theory of Physics eventually involves pointing at lab equipment. There is no lab equipment for morality, so the analogy is not valid.
No, the reductionist description of the Correct Theory of Physics eventually involves pointing at lab equipment. There is no lab equipment for morality, so the analogy is not valid.
I could point a gun to your head and ask you to explain why I shouldn’t pull the trigger.
I could point a gun to your head and ask you to explain why I shouldn’t pull the trigger.
That scenario doesn’t lead to discovering the truth. If I deceive you with bullshit and you don’t pull the trigger, that’s a victory for me. I invite you to try again, but next time pick an example where the participants are incentivised to make true statements.
ETA: …unless the truth we care about is just which flavors of bullshit will persuade you not to pull the trigger. If that’s what you mean by morality, you probably agree with me that it is just social signaling.
Like I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the “No Universally Compelling Argument” post you site applies equally well to physical and even mathematical facts (in fact that was what Eliezer was mainly referring to in that post).
In fact, the main point of that sequence is that just because there are no universally compelling arguments doesn’t mean truth doesn’t exist. As Eliezer mentions in where recursive justification hits bottom:
Now, one lesson you might derive from this, is “Don’t be born with a stupid prior.” This is an amazingly helpful principle on many real-world problems, but I doubt it will satisfy philosophers.
A formal proof is still a proof though, although nothing mandates that a listener must accept it. A mind can very well contain an absolute dismissal mechanism or optimize for something other than correctness.
We can understand what sort of assumptions we’re making when we derive information from mathematical axioms, or the axioms of induction, and how further information follows from that. But what assumptions are we making that would allow us to extrapolate absolute moral facts? Does our process give us any way to distinguish them from preferences?
Do you believe in God? If I defended the notion of God in a similar way—it is not straightforwardly empirical, it’s inappropriate to demand concrete definitions, it’s not under the domain of science, just because you can’t define it and measure it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist—would you find that persuasive?
But I am only defending the idea that morality means something. Atheists think “God” means something. “uncountable set” means something even if the idea is thoroughly non-concrete.
All atheists have to adopt a broad definition of God, or else they would only be disbelieving in the 7th day adventist God, or whatever...ie they would believe in all deities except one, which is more than the average believer.
“Ah, well, if you disbelieve in woojits, then you must know what woojits are! So, what are woojits?” I have no idea.
“But how is that possible? If you don’t have a definition for woojits, on what basis do you reject belief in them?” Having a well-defined notion of something is a prerequisite for belief in it; I don’t have a well-defined notion of woojits; therefore I don’t believe in woojits.
“No, no. You’re confused. All woojit-disbelievers have to adopt a broad definition of woojits in order to disbelieve in them; otherwise they would merely disbelieve in a specific woojit.” (shrug) OK, if you like, I have a broad definition of woojit… so broad, in fact, that it is effectively identical to my definition of all the other concepts I don’t believe in and haven’t thought about, which is the overwhelming majority of all possible concepts. For my part, I consider this equivalent to not having a definition of woojit at all.
As I say, this gets silly. It’s just arguing about definitions of words.
Now, I would agree that atheists who grow up in theist cultures do have a definition of God, though I disagree with you that it’s necessarily broad: I know at least one atheist who was raised Roman Catholic, for example, and the god he disbelieves in is the Roman Catholic god of his youth, and the idea that “God” might conceivably refer to anything else just doesn’t have a lot of meaning to him.
No, I said that asking about the nature of moral claims means “moral” has some prima facie meaning. “woojit” is a made up word with no prima facie meaning. Not analogous.
It doesn’t sill go through, since it did not in the first place. It’s a concrete fact that you can look up “moral” in a dictionary, for all that what you read isn’t very useful.
How is that relevant? I don’t see why the presence in a dictionary matters. But even if it did, boojum is in some dictionaries and encyclopedia too. It is a type of snark.
It’s only in some,and not all, dictionaries because it is a made up word that is supposed to be ill defined and puzzling. Some Lexicographers feel that readers need to be advised that when they encounter this word, it is being used to flag “here is something strange and meaningless”.
So what matters then is if all dictionaries have it? Why does that matter? Does this mean we couldn’t have this discussion before dictionaries were invented? Did the nature of morality change with the invention of a dictionary? Moreover, if one got every dictionary to include “boojum” and “snark” would that then make it different?
If a word is defined in all dictionaries, then the claim that it is completely meaningless is extraordinary and poorly motivated. Dictionaries are of course only significant because they make usage concrete.
If a word is defined in all dictionaries, then the claim that it is completely meaningless is extraordinary and poorly motivated
The claim was about incoherence not whether it was “completely meaningless” and I fail to see how motivation is either relevant or you get anything about a claim being poorly motivated from this. If you prefer a different analogy, consider such terms as transubstantiation, consubstantiation, homoousion, hypostatic union, kerygma and modalism. Similarly, in a Hebrew dictionary you will have all ten Sephirot defined (Keter, chochmah, etc.). Is it is extraordinary and poorly motivated to say that these kabbalistic terms are incoherent?
The point about motivation is about where burdens lie.
The discussion so far has been about the accusation that somebody somewhere is culpably refusing to define “morality”. This is the first mention of incoherence.
“incoherent” is often used as a loose synonym for “I don’t like it”. That is not a useful form of argument. The examples of “incoherent” concepts you gave are a mixed bag of concepts ranging from the well defined but false, to the well defined but ungrounded, to the ill defined. If you want to say what
specific kind of incoherence “morality” has IYO, feel free.
he examples of “incoherent” concepts you gave are a mixed bag of concepts ranging from the well defined but false, to the well defined but ungrounded, to the ill defined. If you want to say what specific kind of incoherence “morality” has IYO, feel free.
You seem confused about what argument CuSithBell is arguing. The argument is not that morality is fundamentally incoherent or meaningless but that most definitions of it fall into those categories and that our common intuition is not sufficient to have useful discussions about it, so you need to supply a definition for what you mean. So far, you seem to have refused to do that. Do you see the distinction?
I’m not really sure what a “mistake of rationality” is, or how it differs from simply being mistaken about something.
That said, I would agree with you that my Roman Catholic atheist friend is not arriving at his atheism in a particularly rational way.
WRT woojits, I’m not jumping to any conclusions: I arrived at that conclusion step-by-step. Again: “Having a well-defined notion of something is a prerequisite for belief in it; I don’t have a well-defined notion of woojits; therefore I don’t believe in woojits.” You’re free to disagree with any part of that or all of it, but I’d prefer you didn’t simply ignore it.
A mistake of rationality is quite different from a perceptual error, for instance. It’s even different to being wrong, since one can be right for irrational reasons.
“Having a well-defined notion of something is a prerequisite for belief in it
I disagree. I believe in consciousness, but don’t have a well defined notion of it.
I don’t have a well-defined notion of woojits
On the one hand, “woojit” might be intended as a synonym for something you do believe in. On the other hand. if it is meaningless, “woojits don’t exist” is meaningless.
Either way, you should not conclude that woojits don’t exist because you don’t know
what they are
I think that it’s easy to be an atheist—i.e. one doesn’t have to make any difficult definitions or arguments to arrive at atheism, and those easy definitions and arguments are correct. If you think it’s harder than I do, that would be interesting and could explain why we have such different opinions here.
Fine. Then the atheist who doesn’t have a difficult definition of God, isn’t culpably refusing to explain her “new idea”, and someone who thinks there is something to be said about morality can stick with the vanilla definition that morality is Right and Wrong and Such.
No, the reductionist description of the Correct Theory of Physics eventually involves pointing at lab equipment. There is no lab equipment for morality, so the analogy is not valid.
I could point a gun to your head and ask you to explain why I shouldn’t pull the trigger.
That scenario doesn’t lead to discovering the truth. If I deceive you with bullshit and you don’t pull the trigger, that’s a victory for me. I invite you to try again, but next time pick an example where the participants are incentivised to make true statements.
ETA: …unless the truth we care about is just which flavors of bullshit will persuade you not to pull the trigger. If that’s what you mean by morality, you probably agree with me that it is just social signaling.
Well you could just as easily use your lab equipment to deceive me with bullshit.
And if he gave a true moral argument you would have to accept it?
How would you distinguish a true argument from a merely persuasive one?
Like I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the “No Universally Compelling Argument” post you site applies equally well to physical and even mathematical facts (in fact that was what Eliezer was mainly referring to in that post).
In fact, the main point of that sequence is that just because there are no universally compelling arguments doesn’t mean truth doesn’t exist. As Eliezer mentions in where recursive justification hits bottom:
A formal proof is still a proof though, although nothing mandates that a listener must accept it. A mind can very well contain an absolute dismissal mechanism or optimize for something other than correctness.
We can understand what sort of assumptions we’re making when we derive information from mathematical axioms, or the axioms of induction, and how further information follows from that. But what assumptions are we making that would allow us to extrapolate absolute moral facts? Does our process give us any way to distinguish them from preferences?
That morality is not straightforwardly empirical is part of why it is inappropriate to demand concrete definitions.
Do you believe in God? If I defended the notion of God in a similar way—it is not straightforwardly empirical, it’s inappropriate to demand concrete definitions, it’s not under the domain of science, just because you can’t define it and measure it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist—would you find that persuasive?
But I am only defending the idea that morality means something. Atheists think “God” means something. “uncountable set” means something even if the idea is thoroughly non-concrete.
Sure, but few-to-no atheists would say something like “‘God’ means something, but exactly what is an open problem.”
The idea of someone refusing to say what they mean by “uncountable set” is even stranger.
All atheists have to adopt a broad definition of God, or else they would only be disbelieving in the 7th day adventist God, or whatever...ie they would believe in all deities except one, which is more than the average believer.
This gets silly.
“Do you believe in woojits?” Well, no, I don’t.
“Ah, well, if you disbelieve in woojits, then you must know what woojits are! So, what are woojits?” I have no idea.
“But how is that possible? If you don’t have a definition for woojits, on what basis do you reject belief in them?” Having a well-defined notion of something is a prerequisite for belief in it; I don’t have a well-defined notion of woojits; therefore I don’t believe in woojits.
“No, no. You’re confused. All woojit-disbelievers have to adopt a broad definition of woojits in order to disbelieve in them; otherwise they would merely disbelieve in a specific woojit.” (shrug) OK, if you like, I have a broad definition of woojit… so broad, in fact, that it is effectively identical to my definition of all the other concepts I don’t believe in and haven’t thought about, which is the overwhelming majority of all possible concepts. For my part, I consider this equivalent to not having a definition of woojit at all.
As I say, this gets silly. It’s just arguing about definitions of words.
Now, I would agree that atheists who grow up in theist cultures do have a definition of God, though I disagree with you that it’s necessarily broad: I know at least one atheist who was raised Roman Catholic, for example, and the god he disbelieves in is the Roman Catholic god of his youth, and the idea that “God” might conceivably refer to anything else just doesn’t have a lot of meaning to him.
If you don’t know what woojits are, you shouldn’t jump to the conclusion that you don’t believe in them. That is a mistake of rationality.
If your RC has concluded that he is an atheist without even considering other gods, that is a mistake of rationality too.
But earlier you indicated that asking what a woojit is requires accepting the notion of woojits as coherent.
No, I said that asking about the nature of moral claims means “moral” has some prima facie meaning. “woojit” is a made up word with no prima facie meaning. Not analogous.
Replace woojit then with boojum and the point still goes through.
It doesn’t sill go through, since it did not in the first place. It’s a concrete fact that you can look up “moral” in a dictionary, for all that what you read isn’t very useful.
How is that relevant? I don’t see why the presence in a dictionary matters. But even if it did, boojum is in some dictionaries and encyclopedia too. It is a type of snark.
It’s only in some,and not all, dictionaries because it is a made up word that is supposed to be ill defined and puzzling. Some Lexicographers feel that readers need to be advised that when they encounter this word, it is being used to flag “here is something strange and meaningless”.
So what matters then is if all dictionaries have it? Why does that matter? Does this mean we couldn’t have this discussion before dictionaries were invented? Did the nature of morality change with the invention of a dictionary? Moreover, if one got every dictionary to include “boojum” and “snark” would that then make it different?
If a word is defined in all dictionaries, then the claim that it is completely meaningless is extraordinary and poorly motivated. Dictionaries are of course only significant because they make usage concrete.
The claim was about incoherence not whether it was “completely meaningless” and I fail to see how motivation is either relevant or you get anything about a claim being poorly motivated from this. If you prefer a different analogy, consider such terms as transubstantiation, consubstantiation, homoousion, hypostatic union, kerygma and modalism. Similarly, in a Hebrew dictionary you will have all ten Sephirot defined (Keter, chochmah, etc.). Is it is extraordinary and poorly motivated to say that these kabbalistic terms are incoherent?
The point about motivation is about where burdens lie.
The discussion so far has been about the accusation that somebody somewhere is culpably refusing to define “morality”. This is the first mention of incoherence.
“incoherent” is often used as a loose synonym for “I don’t like it”. That is not a useful form of argument. The examples of “incoherent” concepts you gave are a mixed bag of concepts ranging from the well defined but false, to the well defined but ungrounded, to the ill defined. If you want to say what specific kind of incoherence “morality” has IYO, feel free.
How are motivations relevant to where burdens lie?
Really? So, what about here?
You seem confused about what argument CuSithBell is arguing. The argument is not that morality is fundamentally incoherent or meaningless but that most definitions of it fall into those categories and that our common intuition is not sufficient to have useful discussions about it, so you need to supply a definition for what you mean. So far, you seem to have refused to do that. Do you see the distinction?
I’m not really sure what a “mistake of rationality” is, or how it differs from simply being mistaken about something.
That said, I would agree with you that my Roman Catholic atheist friend is not arriving at his atheism in a particularly rational way.
WRT woojits, I’m not jumping to any conclusions: I arrived at that conclusion step-by-step. Again: “Having a well-defined notion of something is a prerequisite for belief in it; I don’t have a well-defined notion of woojits; therefore I don’t believe in woojits.” You’re free to disagree with any part of that or all of it, but I’d prefer you didn’t simply ignore it.
A mistake of rationality is quite different from a perceptual error, for instance. It’s even different to being wrong, since one can be right for irrational reasons.
I disagree. I believe in consciousness, but don’t have a well defined notion of it.
On the one hand, “woojit” might be intended as a synonym for something you do believe in. On the other hand. if it is meaningless, “woojits don’t exist” is meaningless. Either way, you should not conclude that woojits don’t exist because you don’t know what they are
Agreed.
This doesn’t strike you as being a problem?
I probably don’t understand what you mean.
I think that it’s easy to be an atheist—i.e. one doesn’t have to make any difficult definitions or arguments to arrive at atheism, and those easy definitions and arguments are correct. If you think it’s harder than I do, that would be interesting and could explain why we have such different opinions here.
Fine. Then the atheist who doesn’t have a difficult definition of God, isn’t culpably refusing to explain her “new idea”, and someone who thinks there is something to be said about morality can stick with the vanilla definition that morality is Right and Wrong and Such.