conchis comments on The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Truth About Morality and What To Do About It - Less Wrong

38 [deleted] 11 June 2009 12:31PM

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Comment author: conchis 13 June 2009 09:48:45AM *  3 points [-]

The point is that it explains how our sense that we have good reasons for things could be an illusion, not that it proves all our intuitions are unjustified.

But I'm just repeating myself now. I think I'm going to stop banging my head against this particular brick wall.

Comment author: SilasBarta 13 June 2009 12:32:26PM 0 points [-]

The point is that it explains how our sense that we have good reasons for things could be an illusion, not that it proves all our intuitions are unjustified.

Yes, it explains quite well how our sense that we have good reasons for believing the earth is round could be an illusion.

Hey, don't feel bad, I found some brick marks on my forehead too.

Comment author: conchis 13 June 2009 05:46:02PM *  4 points [-]

One last shot:

Yes, it explains quite well how our sense that we have good reasons for believing the earth is round could be an illusion.

Um, well, yes. It does explain how that could be the case. And if we had independent reasons to think that statements about the earth being round had no truth value, then it would seem to be a reasonable explanation of how the misperception actually arose.

We don't have such independent reasons in the round earth case; but Greene argues elsewhere that we do have such reasons in the case of moral judgments.

Comment author: SilasBarta 15 June 2009 10:20:58PM 0 points [-]

Um, well, yes. It does explain how that could be the case. And if we had independent reasons to think that statements about the earth being round had no truth value, then it would seem to be a reasonable explanation of how the misperception actually arose.

Your second sentence doesn't follow. If people cling to a belief even after you've "rationally" "defeated" all their reasons for believing it, that is evidence for the believe being based on gut instinct, and evidence for our sense of having good reasons believing it illusory. It doesn't matter that you can find "objective" evidence afterward; that subject's belief, is gut instinct.

So everything is gut instinct, which thus sheds no light on the particular beliefs Greene is criticizing.

Or, you know, you could just go with the simple hypothesis Greene completely ignored, despite familiarity with Haidt, that it's a silly setup designed to catch people unprepared.

Comment author: conchis 16 June 2009 12:18:38AM *  2 points [-]

I don't understand your argument. Nor does it seem to me that you understand mine. It's rather a shame that we appear to have wasted this much space utterly failing to communicate with each other, but at this point I doubt there's much to be gained by wasting any more.