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Jack comments on Attention Less Wrong: We need an FAQ - Less Wrong
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Comments (108)
Well they're different.
And Eliezer is both.
This partially depends on where you place 'ethics'. If ethics is worried about "what's right" in Eliezer's terms, then it's not relativist at all - the pebble-sorters are doing something entirely different from ethics when they argue.
However, if you think the pebble-sorters are trying to answer the question "what should I do" and properly come up with answers that are prime, and you think that answering that question is what ethics is about, then Eliezer is some sort of relativist.
And the answers to these questions will inform the question about subjectivism. In the first case, clearly what's right doesn't depend upon what anybody thinks about what's right. - it's a non-relativist objectivism.
In the second case, there is still room to ask whether the correct answer to the pebblesorters asking "what should I do" depends upon their thoughts on the matter, or if it's something non-mental that determines they should do what's prime; thus, it could be an objective or subjective relativism.
I've don't know of any relativists who aren't subjectivists. That article points out that non-subjectivist relativism is a logical possibility, but the article doesn't give any actual examples of someone defending such a position. I wonder if any exist.
Hobbes might be a candidate if you're okay with distinguishing laws and dictates from the mental states of rulers.
The article does give an example: cultural relativism. Its objective in that it doesn't depend on the mind of the individual, but it's still relative to something: the culture you are in.
That is not how I read it. There's a big parenthetical aside breaking up the flow, but excising that leaves
(Bolding added.) So, either individualistic or cultural relativisms can be subjectivist. That leaves the possibility, in principle, that either could be non-subjectivist, but the article gives no example of someone actually staking out such a position.
You continue:
I think that cultural relativism is mind-dependent in the sense that the article uses the term.
ok, location relativism then. It's doesn't depend on your what's going on inside your head, but it's still relative.
But is anyone a location-relativist for reasons that don't derive from being a cultural-relativist or a "sovereign-command" relativist (according to which the moral is whatever someone with lawful authority over you says it is)?
Now that I think of it, though, certain kinds of non-subjectivist relativism are probably very common, if rarely defended by philosphers. I'm thinking of the claim that morality is whatever maximizes your genetic fitness, or morality is whatever maximizes your financial earnings (even if you have no desire for genetic fitness or financial earnings).
These are relativisms because something might increase your genetic fitness (say) while it decreases mine. But they are not subjectivist because they measure morality according to something independent of anyone's state of mind.
I'm confused by the terminology, but I think I would be a relativist objectivist.
I certainly think that morality is relative -- what is moral is agent-dependent -- but whether or not the agent is behaving morally is an objective fact about that agent's behavior, because the behavior either does or doesn't conform with that agent's morality.
But I don't think the distinction between a relativist objectivist and a relativist subjectivist is terribly exciting: it just depends on whether you consider an agent 'moral' if it conforms to its morality (relativist objectivist) or yours (relativist subjectivist).
But maybe I've got it wrong, because this view seems so reasonable, whereas you've indicated that it's rare.
The key phrase for subjectivism is "mind dependent" so if you think other people's morality comes from their minds then you are a relativist subjectivist.
I just realized I don't think people should conform to their own morality, I think people should conform to my morality which I guess would make me a subjective non-relativist.
So you believe that the word morality is a two-place word and means what an agent would want to do under certain circumstances? What word do you use to means what actually ought to be done? The particular thing that you and, to a large degree all humans would want to do under specified circumstances? Or do you believe there isn't anything that should be done other than what whatever agents exist want? Please note that that position is also a statement about what the universe ought to look like.
Yes, morality is a two-place word -- the evaluation function of whether an action is moral has two inputs: agent, action. "Agent" can be replaced by anything that conceivably has agency, so morality can be considered system-dependent, where systems include social groups and all humanity, etc.
I wouldn't say morality is what the agent wants to do, but is what the agent ought to do, given its preferences. So I think I am still using it in the usual sense.
I can talk about what I ought to do, but it seems to me I can't talk about what another agent ought to do outside their system of preferences. If I had their preferences, I ought to do what they ought to do. If they had my preferences, they ought to do what I ought to do. But to consider what they ought to do, with some mixture of preferences, isn't incoherent.
I can have a preference for what another agent does, of course, but this is different than asserting a morality. For example, if they don't do what I think is moral, I'm not morally culpable. I don't have their agency.
As far as I can tell, we don't disagree on any matter of fact. I agree that we can only optimize our own actions. I agree that other agents won't necessarily find our moral arguments persuasive. I just don't agree that the words moral and ought should be used the way you do.
To the greater LW community: Is there some way we can come up with standard terminology for this sort of thing? I myself have moved toward using the terminology used by Eliezer, but not everyone has. Are there severe objections to his terminology and if so, are there any other terminologies you think we should adopt as standard?
You're thinking of the wrong sense of objective. An objective morality, according to this article, is a morality that doesn't depend on the subject's mind. It depends on something else. I.e., if we were trying to determine what should_byrnema is, we wouldn't look at you're preferences, instead we would look somewhere else. So for example:
A nonrelativist objectivist would say that we would look at the one true universially compelling morality that's written into the fabric of reality (or something like that). So should_byrnema is just should, period.
A relativist objectivist might say (this is just one example - cultural relativism), that we would look for should_byrnema in the culture that you are currently embedded in. So should_byrnema is should_culture.
I'm not sure that subjective nonrelativism is a possibility though.
I think "subjective" means based on opinion (a mind's assessment).
If Megan-is-moral if she thinks she's moral, then the morality of Megan is subjective and depends on her mind. If Megan is moral if I think she's moral, then it's subjective and depends on my mind.
I think that whether an agent is moral or not is a fact, and doesn't depend upon the opinion/assessment of any mind. But we would still look at the agent's preferences to determine the fact. I thought this was already described by the word 'relative'.
"Subjective" has many meanings. The article uses "subjective" to mean dependent on the mind in any way. Not just a mind's assessment.
Given this definition of subjective, the article would classify your last paragraph as an example of subjective relativism.
I see. Just to clarify fully: in my last paragraph, morality depends on the mind because a mind is required for preferences and agency? Are there any exceptions to this?
yep
I dunno, my concept of mind is too fuzzy to have an answer for that.
Thanks, I do understand the framework you're using, and can now say I don't agree with it.
First, one wouldn't say that morality is subjective just because the morality of an entity depends upon its preferences and agency. Even an objective morality would usually apply moral judgments only to entities with preferences and agency.
Second, subjective should mean that Megan's action could considered moral by Fred but not moral by Tom. In other words, the morality is determined by and depends upon someone's mind. In the relative objective morality I've been speaking of, neither Megan, Fred nor Tom gets to decide if Megan's action is moral. The morality of the action is a fact of and determined by the system of Megan, her action, and the context of that action. The morality of her action is something that could be computed by something without a mind, and the morality of her action doesn't depend on the computation actually being done.
I'm not using any framework here, just definitions. The article defined relative and subjective in certain ways in order to classify moral systems, and I've just been relating how the article defines these terms. There's only semantics here, no actual inference.
Surely it's a logical possibility. Stipulate: "What's right is either X or Y, where we ask each person in the universe to think of a random integer, sum them, and pull off the last bit, 0 meaning X is right and 1 meaning Y is right."
ETA: CEV, perhaps?
Wouldn't "Everyone should do what my moral code says they should" be subjective nonrelativism? Surely there are lots of people who believe that.
I don't think the people who believe that, think that their own mental states are what determine the truth of their moral code.
Is CEV even an ethical theory? I thought it was more of an algorithm for extracting human preferences to put them in an AI.
Surely it's a de facto ethical theory, since it determines entirely what the FAI should do. But then, the FAI is not supposed to be a person, so that might make a difference for our use of 'ethical'.
hmm. Then wouldn't it be premised on subjective relativism? (relative to humans)
Yes, I'd considered that when I wrote it, but it's an odd use of 'relative' when it might be equivalent to 'the same for everyone'.
not all possible minds, just human minds
EDIT: but if you thought all possible minds had the same preferences, then it would be subjective nonrelative, wouldn't it?
well then, I'm just not imaginative enough!
Once you've had to argue about ethics with logicians, it becomes natural. "But what if... (completely implausible hypothesis that no one believes)" comes up a lot.
I'm fairly certain you could find people implicitly arguing for some varieties of non-subjective relativism. For example, cultural relativism advances the view that one's culture determines the facts about ethics for oneself, but it's not necessarily mental acts on the part of persons in the culture that determine the facts about ethics. Similarly, Divine Command Theory will give you different answers for different gods, but it's not the mental acts of the persons involved that determine the facts about ethics.
It's an interesting question. The SEP link in Jack's comment actually gives Divine Command Theory as an example of non-relativistic subjectivism. It's subjectivist because what is moral depends on a mental fact about that god — namely, whether that god approves.
It's less clear whether cultural relativism is subjectivist. I'm inclined to think of culture as depending to a large extent on the minds of the people in that culture. (Different peoples whose mental content differed in the right way would have different cultures, even if their material conditions were otherwise identical.) This would make cultural relativism subjectivist as well.
Indeed, I was glossing over that distinction; if you think cultures or God have mental states, then that's a different story. There's also a question of how much "subjectivism" really depends on the relevant minds, and in what way.
I could construct further examples, but we already understand it's logically possible, so that would not be of any help if nobody is advocating them. I think the well has run dry on my end w.r.t examples of relativism in the wild.
Ah, i see. I had always understood relativism to mean what the article calls subjective relativism.