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cata comments on Criteria for Rational Political Conversation - Less Wrong
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I felt like I didn't get the informativeness I bargained for, somehow. Your list of requirements for a rational conversation and your definition of a moral rational decision seem reasonable, but straightforward; even after reading your long exposition, I didn't really find out why these are interesting definitions to arrive at.
EDIT: One caveat is that it's not totally clear to me where the line between "ethical" goals and other goals lies, if there is such a line. Consequently, I don't know how to distinguish between a moral rational decision and just a plain old rational decision. Are ethical goals ones that have a larger influence on other people?
(In particular, I didn't understand the point of contention in the comment thread you linked to, that prompted this post. It seems pretty obvious to me that rationality in a moral context is the same as rationality in any other context; making decisions that are best suited to fulfilling your goals. You never really did address his final question of "how can a terminal value be rational" (my answer would be that it's nonsense to call a value rational or irrational.))
I'm not sure it's important that my conclusions be "interesting". The point was that we needed a guideline (or set thereof), and as far as I know this need has not been previously met.
Once we agree on a set of guidelines, then I can go on to show examples of rational moral decisions -- or possibly not, in which case I update my understanding of reality.
Re ethical vs. other kinds: I'm inclined to agree. I was answering an argument that there is no such thing as a rational moral decision. Jack drew this distinction, not me. Yes, I took way too long coming around to the conclusion that there is no distinction, and I left too much of the detritus of my thinking process lying around in the final essay...
...but on the other hand, it seemed perhaps a little necessary to show a bit of my work, since I was basically coming around to saying "no, you're wrong".
If what you're saying is that there should have been no point of contention, then I agree with that too.
"How can a terminal value be rational?": As far as this argument goes, I assert no such thing. I'm not clear on how that question is important for supporting the point I was trying to make in that argument, much less this one.
I have another argument for the idea that it's not rational to argue on the basis of a terminal value which is not at least partly shared by your audience -- and that if your audience is potentially "all humanity", then your terminal value should probably be something approaching "the common good of all humanity". But that's not a part of this argument.
I could write a post on that too, but I think I need to establish the validity of this point (i.e. how to spot the loonie) first, because that point (rationality of terminal values) builds on this one.