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ciphergoth comments on Complexity of Value ≠ Complexity of Outcome - Less Wrong
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There are a lot of posts here that presuppose some combination of moral anti-realism and value complexity. These views go together well: if value is not fundamental, but dependent on characteristics of humans, then it can derive complexity from this and not suffer due to Occam's Razor.
There are another pair of views that go together well: moral realism and value simplicity. Many posts here strongly dismiss these views, effectively allocating near-zero probability to them. I want to point out that this is a case of non-experts being very much at odds with expert opinion and being clearly overconfident. In the Phil Papers survey for example, 56.3% of philosophers lean towards or believe realism, while only 27.7% lean towards or accept anti-realism.
http://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl
Given this, and given comments from people like me in the intersection of the philosophical and LW communities who can point out that it isn't a case of stupid philosophers supporting realism and all the really smart ones supporting anti-realism, there is no way that the LW community should have anything like the confidence that it does on this point.
Moreover, I should point out that most of the realists lean towards naturalism, which allows a form of realism that is very different to the one that Eliezer critiques. I should also add that within philosophy, the trend is probably not towards anti-realism, but towards realism. The high tide of anti-realism was probably in the middle of the 20th Century, and since then it has lost its shiny newness and people have come up with good arguments against it (which are never discussed here...).
Even for experts in meta-ethics, I can't see how their confidence can get outside the 30%-70% range given the expert disagreement. For non-experts, I really can't see how one could even get to 50% confidence in anti-realism, much less the kind of 98% confidence that is typically expressed here.
Could you direct us to the best arguments for moral realism, or against anti-realism? Thanks!
In metaethics, there are typically very good arguments against all known views, and only relatively weak arguments for each of them. For anything in philosophy, a good first stop is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Here are some articles on the topic at SEP:
I think the best book to read on metaethics is:
Toby, I read through those SEP articles but couldn't find the good arguments against anti-realism that you mentioned. In contrast, the article on deontology laid out the arguments for and against it very clearly.
Can you please point us more specifically to the arguments that you find persuasive? Maybe just give us some page numbers in the book that you referenced? Most of us don't really have the time to read something like that cover to cover in search of a few nuggets of information.
Thank you for doing that, and may I second this. I started reading those articles, then after a bit started scanning for the anti-realism articles, and worried after not finding them that I'd not read carefully enough, so I'm glad to have your report on this.
I really am curious to read these arguments, so I hope someone can point us to them.
I managed to find a draft of a book chapter titled In Defence of Moral Realism. I'm still wondering what Toby thinks the best arguments are, but alas he doesn't seem to be following this discussion anymore.
Thanks! Again, didn't get much from a quick skim, let me know if you find any real meat in there.
The thing that really got my attention wasn't the assertion that there are some arguments in favour of realism, but that there are good arguments specifically against anti-realism.
I know I've spoken of "skimming" twice here. I promise, if Toby Ord were to say to me "this contains good arguments against anti-realism" I would read it carefully.
But surely an argument against anti-realism is also an argument for realism? I'm interpreting Toby's comment as saying that there are good arguments for realism in general, but not for any particular realist meta-ethical theory.
The author says in the conclusion, "I do not pretend to give any knock-down argument in this chapter for the thesis that objective moral facts or reasons exist, independently of our thoughts and actions." So I think it's mostly a matter of how convincing one finds the argument that he does give.
It seems likely, given that the author is a specialist in and proponent of moral realism, that he would give the best arguments that he knew, so this paper seems like good evidence for what kind of arguments for realism is currently available.
Will read carefully on that basis. Thanks.
Do you have a personal favourite argument against moral anti-realism in there you could point me to?
Thanks! There were several points in your PhD thesis where I couldn't work out how to square your position with moral anti-realism - I guess I know why now :-)
My case was here:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/1m5/savulescu_genetically_enhance_humanity_or_face/1fuv
Basically, morality is a product of evolution - which can be expected to favour some moral values over other ones - just as it favours certain physical structures like eyes and legs.
Things like: "under most circumstances, don't massacre your relatives or yourself" can be reasonably expected to be widespread values in the universe. The idea gives morality a foundation in the natural world.
It is useful that Tim summarizes his position in this context, voted up.
My position, developed with no background in philosophy or meta-ethics whatsoever and thus likely to be error-riddled or misguided, is that I consider it an unsolved problem within physical materialism (specifically, within the context of moral anti-realism) how "meaning" (the meaning of life and/or the value of values) can be a coherent or possible concept.
Leave humans out of it and try to think about meanings of signals among animals, with an evolutionary perspective.