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komponisto comments on What is Eliezer Yudkowsky's meta-ethical theory? - Less Wrong
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Eliezer's metaethics might be clarified in terms of the distinctions between sense, reference, and reference-fixing descriptions. I take it that Eliezer wants to use 'right' as a rigid designator to denote some particular set of terminal values, but this reference fact is fixed by means of a seemingly 'relative' procedure (namely, whatever terminal values the speaker happens to hold, on some appropriate [if somewhat mysterious] idealization). Confusions arise when people mistakenly read this metasemantic subjectivism into the first-order semantics or meaning of 'right'.
In summary:
(i) 'Right' means, roughly, 'promotes external goods X, Y and Z'
(ii) claim i above is true because I desire X, Y, and Z.
Note that Speakers Use Their Actual Language, so murder would still be wrong even if I had the desires of a serial killer. But if I had those violent terminal values, I would speak a slightly different language than I do right now, so that when KillerRichard asserts "Murder is right!" what he says is true. We don't really disagree, but are instead merely talking past each other.
Virtues of the theory:
(a) By rigidifying on our actual, current desires (or idealizations thereupon), it avoids Inducing Desire Satisfactions.
(b) Shifting the subjectivity out to the metasemantic level leaves us with a first-order semantic proposal that at least does a better job than simple subjectivism at 'saving the phenomena'. (It has echoes of Mark Schroeder's desire-based view of reasons, according to which the facts that give us reasons are the propositional contents of our desires, rather than the desires themselves. Or something like that.)
(c) It's naturalistic, if you find moral non-naturalism 'spooky'. (Though I'd sooner recommend Mackie-style error theory for naturalists, since I don't think (b) above is enough to save the phenomena.)
Objections
(1) It's incompatible with the datum that substantive, fundamental normative disagreement is in fact possible. People may share the concept of a normative reason, even if they fundamentally disagree about which features of actions are the ones that give us reasons.
(2) The semantic tricks merely shift the lump under the rug, they don't get rid of it. Standard worries about relativism re-emerge, e.g. an agent can know a priori that their own fundamental values are right, given how the meaning of the word 'right' is determined. This kind of (even merely 'fundamental') infallibility seems implausible.
(3) Just as simple subjectivism is an implausible theory of what 'right' means, so Eliezer's meta-semantic subjectivism is an implausible theory of why 'right' means promoting external goods X, Y, Z. An adequately objective metaethics shouldn't even give preferences a reference-fixing role.
I think this is an excellent summary. I would make the following comments:
Yes, but I think Eliezer was mistaken in identifying this kind of confusion as the fundamental source of the objections to his theory (as in the Löb's theorem discussion). Sophisticated readers of LW (or OB, at the time) are surely capable of distinguishing between logical levels. At least, I am -- but nevertheless, I still didn't feel that his theory was adequately "non-relativist" to satisfy the kinds of people who worry about "relativism". What I had in mind, in other words, was your objections (2) and (3).
The answer to those objections, by the way, is that an "adequately objective" metaethics is impossible: the minds of complex agents (such as humans) are the only place in the universe where information about morality is to be found, and there are plenty of possible minds in mind-design space (paperclippers, pebblesorters, etc.) from which it is impossible to extract the same information. This directly answers (3), anyway; as for (2), "fallibility" is rescued (on the object level) by means of imperfect introspective knowledge: an agent could be mistaken about what its own terminal values are.
Note that your answer to (2) also answers (1): value uncertainty makes it seem as if there is substantive, fundamental normative disagreement even if there isn't. (Or maybe there is if you don't buy that particular element of EY's theory)
That's not a reason to prefer EY's theory to an error theory (according to which properly normative properties would have to be irreducibly normative, but no such properties actually exist).
Richard,
Until persuaded otherwise, I agree with you on this point. (These days, I take Richard Joyce to have the clearest defense of error theory, and I just subtract his confusing-to-me defense of fictionalism.) Besides, I think there are better ways of getting something like an 'objective' ethical theory (in something like a 'realist' sense) while still holding that reasons for action arise only from desires, or from relations between desires and states of affairs. In fact, that's the kind of theory I defend: desirism. Though, I'm not too interested anymore in whether desirism is to be called 'objective' or 'realist', even though I think a good case can be made for both.