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Vaniver comments on Strong moral realism, meta-ethics and pseudo-questions. - Less Wrong
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Comments (172)
In this discussion, I understand there to be three positions:
The 'objective' and 'subjective' distinction is not particularly useful for this discussion, because it confuses the separation between 'measurable' and 'unmeasurable' (1+2 vs. 3) and 'universal' and 'particular' (1 vs. 2+3).
But even 'universal' and 'particular' are not quite the right words- Clippy's particular preference for paperclips is one that Clippy would like to enforce on the entire universe.
No one holds 3. 1 is ambiguous; it depends on whether we're speaking "in character" or not. If we are, then it follows from 2 ("there is one objectively measurable value system, namely mine").
The trouble with Eliezer's "metaethics" sequence is that it's written in character (as a human), and something called "metaethics" shouldn't be.
It is not obvious to me that this is the case.
[edit to expand]: I think that when a cognitivist claims "I'm not a relativist," they need to have a position like 3 to identify as relativism. Perhaps it is an overreach to use 'value system' instead of 'morality' in the description of 3, which was a choice driven more by my allergy to the word 'morality' than to be correct or communicative.
One could be certain that God's morality is correct, but be uncertain what God's morality is.
I agree with this assessment.
Yes. He's has strong intuitions that his own moral intuitions are really true, combined with strong intuitions that,morality is this very localized .human thing,, that doesn't exist elsewhere. So he defines morality as what humans.think morality is...what I dont know isn't knowledge.
People always write in character. If you try to use some different definition of "morality" than normal for talking about metaethics, you'll reach the wrong conclusions because, y'know, you're quite literally not talking about morality any more.
Language is different from metalanguage, even if both are (in) English.
You shouldn't be using any definition of "morality" when talking about metaethics, because on that level the definition of "morality" isn't fixed; that's what makes it meta.
My complaint about the sequence is that it should have been about the orthogonality thesis, but instead ended up being about rigid designation.
I can't make sense of that. Isn't the whole point of metaethics to create an account of what this morality stuff is (if it's anything at all) and how the word "morality" manages to refer to it? If metaethics wasn't about morality it wouldn't be called metaethics, it would be called, I dunno, "decision theory" or something.
And if it is about morality, it's unclear how you're supposed to refer to the subject matter (morality) without saying "morality". Or the other subject matter (the word "morality") to which you fail to refer if you start talking about a made-up word that's also spelled "m o r a l i t y" but isn't the word people actually use.
I remember it as being about both. (exhibit 1, exhibit 2. The latter was written before EY had heard of rigid designators, though. It could probably be improved these days.)
You should use a definition, but one that doesn't beg the question.