You can’t have the first half without the second half. Either you are a moral absolutist, or a moral relativist.
See, I’d give 99:1 odds that he’d strongly disagree with this as well (as do I). Now, your position is that you must be one or the other (if you’re to be coherent), but I hope you can admit of the possibility that Eliezer sees that as a false dichotomy. From your perspective, this makes his metaethics a hopeless muddle of absolutism and relativism, but this should give you different predictions about how MoR turns out than would the assumption that he’s a standard moral relativist.
I hope we can at least agree on that much, before we turn to arguing anything else.
See, I’d give 99:1 odds that he’d strongly disagree with this as well (as do I). Now, your position is that you must be one or the other (if you’re to be coherent), but I hope you can admit of the possibility that Eliezer sees that as a false dichotomy. From your perspective, this makes his metaethics a hopeless muddle of absolutism and relativism, but this should give you different predictions about how MoR turns out than would the assumption that he’s a standard moral relativist.
I hope we can at least agree on that much, before we turn to arguing anything else.