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timtyler comments on Savulescu: "Genetically enhance humanity or face extinction" - Less Wrong
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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.
Re: "Optimal by what measure? By the measure of maximizes the sort of things I value?"
No!
The basic idea is that some moral systems are better than other - in nature's eyes. I.e. they are more likely to exist in the universe. Invoking nature as arbitrator will probably not please those who think that nature favours the immoral - but they should at least agree that nature provides a yardstick with which to measure moral systems.
I don't have access to the details of which moral systems nature favours. If I did - and had a convincing supporting argument - there would probably be fewer debates about morality. However, the moral systems we have seen on the planet so far certainly seem to be pertinent evidence.
Measured by this standard, moral progress cannot fail to occur. In any case, that's a measure of progress quite orthogonal to what I value, and so of course gives me no reason to celebrate moral progress.
Re: "moral progress cannot fail to occur"
Moral degeneration would typically correspond to devolution - which happens in highly radioactive environments, or under frequent meteorite impacts, or other negative local environmental condittions - provided these are avoidable elsewhere.
However, we don't see very much devolution happening on this planet - which explains why I think moral progress is happening.
I am inclined to doubt that nature's values are orthogonal to your own. Nature built you, and you are part of a successful culture produced by a successful species. Nature made you and your values - you can reasonably be expected to agree on a number of things.
From the perspective of the universe at large, humans are at best an interesting anomaly. Humans, plus all domesticated animals, crops, etc, compose less than 2% of the earth's biomass. The entire biomass is a few parts per billion of the earth (maybe it's important as a surface feature, but life is still outmassed by about a million times by the oceans and a thousand times by the atmosphere). The earth itself is a few parts per million of the solar system, which is one of several billion like it in the galaxy.
All of the mass in this galaxy, and all the other galaxy, quasars, and other visible collections of matter, are outmassed five to ten times by hydrogen atoms in intergalactic space.
And all that, all baryonic matter, composes a few percent of the mass-energy of the universe.
Negative?! They're great for the bacteria that survive.
And I suspect those with "devolved" morality would feel the same way.
Nature is my candidate for providing an objective basis for morality.
Moral systems that don't exist - or soon won't exist - might have some interest value - but generally, it is not much use being good if you are dead.
"Might is right" does not seem like a terribly good summary of nature's fitness criteria. They are more varied than that - e.g. see the birds of paradise - which are often more beautiful than mighty.
(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.
That link is to "C.S. Lewis's THE ABOLITION OF MAN".
And I would be interested to know what people think of Lewis' Tao, and the arguments he makes for it.
Since:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis#Conversion_to_Christianity
...I figure there would need to be clearly-evident redeeming features for anyone here to bother.
Meh. If someone being a theist were enough reason to not bother reading their arguments, we wouldn't read much at all.
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.
You don't seem to be entering into the spirit of this. The idea of there being one optimum which is found from many different starting conditions is not subject to the criticism that it's location is a function of accidents in our history.
Rather obviously - since human morality is currently in a state of progressive development - it hasn't reached any globally optimum value yet.
Maybe I misunderstood your original comment. You seemed to be arguing that moral progress is possible based on convergence. My point was even if it does reach a globally convergent value, that doesn't mean that value is objectively optimal, or the true morality.
In order to talk about moral "progress", or an "optimum" value, you need to first find some objective yardstick. Convergence does not establish that such a yardstick exists.
I agree with your comment, except that there are some meaningful definitions of morality and moral progress that don't require morality to be anything but a property of the agents who feel compelled by it, and which don't just assume that whatever happens is progress.
(In essence, it is possible— though very difficult for human beings— to figure out what the correct extrapolation from our confused notions of morality might be, remembering that the "correct" extrapolation is itself going to be defined in terms of our current morality and aesthetics. This actually ends up going somewhere, because our moral intuitions are a crazy jumble, but our more meta-moral intuitions like non-contradiction and universality are less jumbled than our object-level intuitions.)
Well, of course you can define "objectively optimal morality" to mean whatever you want.
My point was that if there is natural evolutionary convergence, then it makes reasonable sense to define "optimal morality" as the morality of the optimal creatures. If there was a better way of behaving (in the eyes of nature), then the supposedly optimal creatures would not be very optimal.
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.