byrnema comments on The Wannabe Rational - Less Wrong

31 Post author: MrHen 15 January 2010 08:09PM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 17 January 2010 04:13:29PM 5 points [-]

I like to use the word "transcendent", as in "no transcendent morality", where the word "transcendent" is chosen to sound very impressive and important but not actually mean anything.

However, you can still be a moral cognitivist and believe that moral statements have truth-values, they just won't be transcendent truth-values. What is a "transcendent truth-value"? Shrugs.

It's not like "transcedental morality" is a way the universe could have been but wasn't.

Comment author: byrnema 17 January 2010 05:23:32PM *  0 points [-]

Yes, I think that transcendent is a great adjective for this concept of morality I'm attached to. I like it because it makes it clear why I would label the attachment 'theistic' even though I have no attachment that I'm aware of to other necessarily 'religious' beliefs.

Since I do 'believe in' physical materialism, I expect science to eventually explain that morality can transcend the subjective/objective chasm in some way or that if morality does not, to identify whether this fact about the universe is consistent or inconsistent with my particular programming. (This latter component specifically is the part I was thinking you haven't covered; I can only say this much now because the discussion had helped develop my thoughts quite a bit already.)

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 17 January 2010 10:51:41PM 2 points [-]

Er, did you actually read the Metaethics sequence?