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thomblake comments on Attention Less Wrong: We need an FAQ - Less Wrong
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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.
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?
Maybe, though in that unlikely event I would suspect that there's some universal law behind that odd fact about preferences, in which case I'd think it would be objective.
Well I'm not sure we need to consider merely logically possible minds, and it's logically possible that non-human minds are physically impossible.
Only in the sense that it logically possible that travel to Mars is physically impossible. The wording is deceptive.
I'm not sure what sense you're referring to, or what you're comparing it to, or how it's deceptive.
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.