Vladimir_M comments on Morality and relativistic vertigo - Less Wrong

40 Post author: Academian 12 October 2010 02:00AM

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Comment author: Perplexed 12 October 2010 03:42:47AM 8 points [-]

All of your examples dealing with morality take a consequentialist stance with regard to ethics. I don't think that anyone has ever doubted that science might be relevant in computing the expected consequences of actions. So, I don't think you are saying anything fundamentally new here by applying science to pairs of ethical maxims rather than to one at a time.

But a lot of people are not consequentialists - they are deontologists (i.e. believers in moral duties). That duties may be in conflict on occasion has also been known for a long time - I'm told this theme was common in Greek tragedy. I'm curious as to whether and how your methodology can find a toehold for science in a duty-based account of morality.

For example:

  • Everyone has a duty not to masturbate.
  • Every married person has a duty not to commit adultery.

Where is the conflict, even if science is brought in?

Comment author: Vladimir_M 12 October 2010 04:13:17AM *  6 points [-]

Perplexed:

But a lot of people are not consequentialists - they are deontologists (i.e. believers in moral duties).

Actually, my impression is that the overwhelming majority of people are practitioners of folk virtue ethics in their own personal lives. (This typically applies to the self-professed consequentialists and deontologists too, including those who have made whole academic careers out of advocating these ideas in the abstract.) I expanded on this thesis once in a long and somewhat rambling comment, which I should rewrite in a more systematic way sometime.

It mostly boils down to maintaining and enforcing an elaborate system of tacit-agreement focal points in one's interactions with other people, and priding oneself on being the sort of person who does this with consistent high skill, which is one of the basic elements of what the ancients called "virtue." (Of course, when it comes to views that don't have practical relevance for one's personal life, it's mostly about signaling games instead.)