Wei_Dai comments on What is Eliezer Yudkowsky's meta-ethical theory? - Less Wrong

33 Post author: lukeprog 29 January 2011 07:58PM

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Comment author: Wei_Dai 11 July 2011 11:58:57PM *  4 points [-]

I just dispute whether your definitions adequately capture the things that most people really care about (i.e. treat as essential) when using the terms in question.

It's no excuse to say that metaethical reductionism "gets reality right" when the whole dispute is instead over whether they have accommodated (or rather eliminated) some concept of which we have a pre-theoretic grasp.

What if metaethical reductionism is not meant (by some) to accommodate the pre-theoretic grasp of "morality" of most people, but just to accommodate the pre-theoretic grasp of "morality" of people like lessdazed? Could metaethical reductionism be considered a "respectable position" in that sense?

And separately, suppose the main reason I'm interested in metaethics is that I am trying to answer a question like "Should I terminally value the lives of random strangers?" and I'm not sure what that question means exactly or how I should go about answering it. In this case, is there a reason for me to care much about the pre-theoretic grasp of most people, as opposed to, say, people I think are most likely to be right about morality?