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timtyler comments on Savulescu: "Genetically enhance humanity or face extinction" - Less Wrong
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I would regard any claim that abolition of hanging, burning witches, caning children in schools, torture, stoning, flogging, keel-hauling and stocks are "morally orthogonal" with considerable suspicion.
There no abolishion of torture anyone in the US. Some clever people ran a campaign in last decade that eroded the consensus that torture is always wrong. At the same time the US hasn't reproduced burning witches.
That's not the case. The United States signed and ratified the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
Last year the US blackmailed the UK demanding that the UK either violates the United Nations Convention against torture or that the US will stop giving the UK intelligence about possible terrorist plots that might kill UK citizens. The US under the Obama administration doesn't only violate the document themselves but also it also blackmails other countries to violate it as well.
Just because it is done by the government doesn't make it legal.
Right - but it has been banned elsewhere:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_Rights#Article_3_-_torture
I'm happy to see those things abolished too, but since I'm not a moral realist I can't see how to build a useful model of "moral progress".
According to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_realism
...this involves attributing truth and falsity to moral statements - whereas it seems more realistic to say that moral truth has a subjective component.
However, the idea of moral progress does not mean there is "one true morality".
It just means that some moralities are better than others. The moral landscape could have many peaks - not just one.
I see no problem with the concept of moral progress. The idea that all moralities are of equal merit seems like totally inexcusable cultural relativism to me. Politically correct, perhaps - but also silly.
Morality is about how best to behave. We have a whole bunch of theory from evolutionary biology that relates to that issue - saying what goals organisms have - which actions are most likely to attain them - how individual goals conflict with goals that are seen acceptable to society - and so on. Some of it will be a reflection of historical accidents - while other parts of it will be shared with most human cultures - and most alien races.
My position on these things is currently very close to that set out in THE TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD TRUTH ABOUT MORALITY AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT.
Well, I hope I explained how a denial of "moral realism" was quite compatible with the idea of moral progress.
Since that was your stated reason for denying moral progress, do you disagree with my analysis, or do you have a new reason for objecting to moral progress, or have you changed your mind about it?
I certainly don't think there is anything wrong with the idea of moral progress in principle.
Finding some alien races, would throw the most light on the issue of convergent moral evolution - but in the mean time, our history, and the behaviour of other animals (e.g. dolphins) do offer some support for the idea, it seems to me.
Conway Morris has good examples of convergent evolution. It is a common phenomenon - and convergent moral evolution would not be particularly surprising.
If moral behaviour arises in a space which is subject to attractors, then some moral systems will be more widespread than others. If there is one big attractor, then moral realism would have a concrete basis.
No, sorry, I don't see it at all. When you say "some moralities are better than others", better by what yardstick? If you're not a moral realist, then everyone has their own yardstick.
I really recommend against ever using the thought-stopping phrase "political correctness" ever for any purpose, but I absolutely reject the "cultural relativism" that you attribute to me as a result, by the way. Someone performing a clitorectomy may be doing the right thing by their own lights, but by my lights they're doing totally the wrong thing, and since my lights are what I care about I'm quite happy to step in and stop them if I have the power to, or to see them locked up for it.
To continue with your analogy, moral realists claim there is one true yardstick. If you deny that it doesn't mean you can't measure anything, and that all attempts are useless. For example, people could still use yardsticks if they were approximately the same length.
I'm still not catching it. There isn't one true yardstick, but there has been moral progress. I'm guessing that this is against a yardstick which sounds a bit more "objective" when you state it, such as "maximizing happiness" or "maximising human potential" or "reducing hypocrisy" or some such. But you agree that thinking that such a yardstick is a good one is still a subjective, personal value judgement that not everyone will share, and it's still only against such a judgement that there can be moral progress, no?
I don't expect everyone to agree about morality. However, there are certainly common elements in the world's moral systems - common in ways that are not explicable by cultural common descent.
Cultural evolution is usually even more blatantly directional than DNA evolution is. One obvious trend is moral evolution is its increase in size. Caveman morality was smaller than most modern moralities.
Cultural evolution also exhibits convergent evolution - like DNA evolution does.
Most likely, like DNA evolution, it will eventually slow down - as it homes in on an deep, isolated optimum.
If there is one such optimum, and many systems eventually find it, moral realism would have a pretty good foundation. If there were many different optima with wildly-different moralities, it would not. Probably an intermediate position is most realistic - with advanced moral systems agreeing on a many things - but not everything.
We're still going in circles. Optimal by what measure? By the measure of maximizes the sort of things I value? Morals have definitely got better by that measure. Please, when you reply, don't use words like "best" or "optimal" or "merit" or any such normative phrase without specifying the measure against which you're maximising.
(Replying again here rather than at the foot of a nugatory meta-discussion.)
I suggested C.S. Lewis' "The Abolition of Man" as proposing a candidate for an optimum towards which moral systems have gravitated.
C.S. Lewis was, as Tim Tyler points out, a Christian, but I shall trust that we are all rational enough here to not judge the book from secondary data, when the primary source is so short, clearly written, and online. We need not don the leather cloak and posied beak to avoid contamination from the buboes of this devilish theist oozing Christian memes. It is anyway not written from a Christian viewpoint. To provide a summary would be to make soup of the soup. Those who do not wish to read that, are as capable of not reading this, which is neither written from a Christian viewpoint, nor by a Christian.
I am sufficiently persuaded that the eight heads under which he summarises the Tao can be found in all cultures everywhere: these are things that everyone thinks good. One might accuse him of starting from New Testament morality and recognising only that in his other sources, but if so, the defects are primarily of omission. For example, his Tao contains no word in praise of wisdom: such words can be found in the traditions he draws on, but are not prominent in the general doctrines of Christianity (though not absent either). His Tao is silent on temperance, determination, prudence, and excellence.
Those unfamiliar with talk of virtue can consult this handy aide-memoire and judge for themselves which of them are also to be found in all major moral systems and which are parochial. Those who know many languages might also try writing down all the names of virtues they can think of in each language: what do those lists have in common?
Here's an experiment for everyone to try: think it good to eat babies. Don't merely imagine thinking that: actually think it. I do not expect anyone to succeed, any more than you can look at your own blood and see it as green, or decide to believe that two and two make three.
What is the source of this universal experience?
Lewis says that the Tao exists, it is constant, and it is known to all. People and cultures differ only in how well they have apprehended it. It cannot be demonstrated to anyone, only recognised. He does not speculate in this work on where it comes from, but elsewhere he says that it is the voice of God within us. The less virtuous among us are those who hear that voice more faintly; the evil are those who do not hear it at all, or hear it and hate it. I think there will be few takers for that here.
Some -- well, one, at least -- reverse the arrow, saying that God is the good that we do, which presumably makes Satan the evil that we do.
Others say that there are objective moral facts which we discern by our moral sense, just as we discern objective physical facts by our physical senses; in both cases the relationship requires some effort to attain to the objective truth.
Others say, this is how we are made: we are so constituted as to judge some things virtuous, just as we are so constituted as to judge some things red. They may or may not give evpsych explanations of how this came to be, but whatever the explanation, we are stuck with this sense just as much as we are stuck with our experience of colour or of mathematical truth. We may arrive at moral conclusions by thought and experience, but cannot arbitrarily adopt them. Some claim to have discarded them altogether, but then, some people have managed to put their eyes out or shake their brains to pieces.
Come the Singularity, of course, all this goes by the board. Friendliness is an issue beyond just AGI.
Here is one proposed candidate for that optimum.
They could be explicable by common evolutionary descent: for instance, our ethics probably evolved because it was useful to animals living in large groups or packs with social hierarchies.
No, not at all. That optimum may have evolved to be useful under the conditions we live in, but that doesn't mean it's objectively right.
Additionally, the lengths of the yardsticks could be standardized to make them better - for example, as has actually occurred, by tying the units of "yards" to the previously-standardized metric system.
I was criticising the idea that "all moralities are of equal merit". I was not attributing that idea to you. Looking at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_relativism
...it looks like I used the wrong term.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism
...looks slightly better - but still is not quite the concept I was looking for - I give up for the moment.
I'm not sure if there's standard jargon for "all moralities are of equal merit" (I'm pretty sure that's isomorphic to moral nihilism, anyway). However, people tend to read various sorts of relativism that way, and it's not uncommon in discourse to see "Cultural relativism" to be associated with such a view.
Believing that all moralities are of equal merit is a particularly insane brand of moral realism.
What I was thinking of was postmodernism - in particular the sometimes-fashionable postmodern conception that all ideas are equally valid. It is a position sometimes cited in defense of the idea that science is just another belief system.
Thanks for that link: I had seen that mentioned before and had wanted to read it.
I've been reading that (I'm on page 87), and I haven't gotten to a part where he explains how that makes moral progress meaningless. Why not just define moral progress sort of as extrapolated volition (without the "coherent" part)? You don't even have to reference convergent moral evolution.
I don't think it mentions moral progress. It just seems obvious that if there is no absolute morality, then the only measures against which there has been progress are those that we choose.
Of course it isn't "objective" or absolute. I already disclaimed moral realism (by granting arguendo the validity of the linked thesis). Why does it follow that you "can't see how to build a useful model of 'moral progress'"? Must any model of moral progress be universal?
If you're talking about progress relative to my values, then absolutely there has been huge progress.
I'm not talking specifically about that. Mainly what I'm wondering is what exactly motivated you to say "can't see how ..." in the first place. What makes a measure of progress that you choose (or is chosen based on some coherent subset of human moral values, etc.) somehow ... less valid? not worthy of being used? something else?
It's possible we're violently agreeing here. By my own moral standards, and by yours, there has definitely been moral progress. Since there are no "higher" moral standards against which ours can be compared, there's no way for my feelings about it to be found objectively wanting.