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thomblake comments on Overcoming the mind-killer - Less Wrong
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This is taken out of context, but I must take issue with it. If you can decide whether an action is right or wrong, then that decision can be made rationally, for any decent definition of 'rationality' that is about decisions.
So if you want to claim, "One cannot rationally decide whether an action is right or wrong", that reduces to "One cannot decide whether an action is right or wrong". In that case, would it be because your decisions can't affect your beliefs, or because there is objective morality, or some other reason?
I'm not sure I understand your issue. If this response doesn't work you may have to reexplain.
If you have some values-- say happiness-- then there can be irrational ways of evaluating actions in terms of those values. So if I'm concerned with happiness but only look at the effects of the action on my sneakers, and not the emotions of people, well that seems irrational if happiness is really what I care about. Certainly there are actions which can either be consistent or inconsistent with some set of values and taking actions that are inconsistent with your values is irrational. What I don't see is what it could mean for those values to be rational or irrational in the first place. I don't think people "decide" on terminal values in the way they decide on breakfast or to give to some charity over another.
Does that address your concern?
See my comment about "internal" and "external" terminal values -- I think possibly that's where we're failing to communicate.
Internal terminal values don't have to be rational -- but external ones (goals for society) do, and need to take individual ones into account. Violating an individual internal TV causes suffering, which violates my proposed universal external TV.
For instance... if I'm a heterosexual male, then one of my terminal values might be to form a pair-bond with a female of my species. That's an internal terminal value. This doesn't mean that I think everyone should do this; I can still support gay rights. "Supporting gay rights" is an external value, but not a terminal one for me. For a gay person, it probably would be a terminal value -- so prohibiting gays from marrying would be violating their internal terminal values, which causes suffering, which violates my proposed universal external terminal value of "minimizing suffering / maximizing happiness" -- and THAT is why it is wrong to prohibit gays from marrying, not because I personally happen to think it is wrong (i.e. not because of my external intermediate value of supporting gay rights).
I'm fine with that distinction but it doesn't change my point. Why do external terminal values have to be rational? What does it mean for a value to be rational?
Can you just answer those two questions?
Here's my answer, finally... or a more complete answer, anyway.
It's not visible, I think you have to publish it.
I finally figured out what was going on, and fixed it. For some reason it got posted in "drafts" instead of on the site, and looking at the post while logged in gave no clue that this was the case.
Sorry about that!