Perplexed comments on If reductionism is the hammer, what nails are out there? - Less Wrong

14 Post author: AnnaSalamon 11 December 2010 01:58PM

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Comment author: AnnaSalamon 11 December 2010 02:10:01PM 12 points [-]

I know moral relativism is not universally popular, but can reductionism/rationalism lead to anything else?

That depends a lot on what you mean by "moral relativism". Certainly rationality and reductionism need not imply taking morality less seriously. I liked what Eliezer's Harry Potter had to say on the subject:

"No," Professor Quirrell said. His fingers rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I don't think that's quite what I was trying to say. Mr. Potter, in the end people all do what they want to do. Sometimes people give names like 'right' to things they want to do, but how could we possibly act on anything but our own desires?"

"Well, obviously," Harry said. "I couldn't act on moral considerations if they lacked the power to move me. But that doesn't mean my wanting to hurt those Slytherins has the power to move me more than moral considerations!"

If you haven't looked at it already, you might like Eliezer's sequence on metaethics, which talks about how one can notice that our concerns are generated by our brains, and that one could design brains with different concerns, while still taking morality seriously.

Comment author: Perplexed 11 December 2010 08:47:18PM 5 points [-]

one could design brains with different concerns, while still taking morality seriously.

It sounds a lot as if you are suggesting that there is some essence to morality which transcends "concerns are generated by our brains".

Comment author: Nick_Tarleton 19 December 2010 11:53:11AM 0 points [-]

"still taking morality seriously" modifies "one [who can...]", not "brains with different concerns".

Comment author: Perplexed 19 December 2010 03:20:34PM 0 points [-]

I'm not sure why you came to think there was some confusion on this point, so I will not presume to suggest where you went wrong in your reading.

Comment author: timtyler 12 December 2010 11:52:41AM *  0 points [-]

One attractor in the space of moral systems that doesn't have much to do with what could be engineered into brains is the class of moral systems that are favoured by natural selection.