TheAncientGeek comments on Strong moral realism, meta-ethics and pseudo-questions. - Less Wrong

18 [deleted] 31 January 2010 08:20PM

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Comment author: Wei_Dai 02 February 2010 05:59:09AM *  6 points [-]

But how should one choose between morality and babyeating?

Channeling my inner Eliezer, the answer is obviously that you should choose morality (since "should" is just "morality" as a verb).

Now, instead of a moral anti-realist, I'm a moral realist, a babyeating realist, and normative judgement anti-realist.

No, because normative judgement = morality.

This is almost starting to make sense, except... Suppose I say this to a babyeater: "We should sign a treaty banning the development and use of antimatter weapons." What could that possibly mean? Or if one murderer says to another "We should dump the body in the river." he is simply stating a factual falsehood?

I wonder if this is a good summary of our disagreement with Eliezer:

  1. His proposed definitions of "morality" and especially "should" and "ought" are objectionable. They are just not what we mean when we use those words.
  2. He classifies his metaethics as realism whereas we would classify it as anti-realism.

Out of these two, 1 is clearly both a bigger problem and where Eliezer is more obviously wrong. I really don't understand why he sticks to his position there.

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 29 May 2014 02:51:04PM *  0 points [-]

Should has many meanings. Which moral system I believe in is meta level, not object level and probably implies an epistemic-should or rational-should rather than moral-should.

Likewise, not all normative judgement is morality. What you should do to maximise personal pleasure, .lor make money, or "win" in some way , is generally not what you morally-should.