Traditional moral subjectivism usually says that what X should do depends on who X is in some intrinsic way. In other words, when you ask "what should X do?", the answer you get is the answer to "what should_X X do?" On EY's theory, when you ask "what should X do?", the answer you get is the answer to "what should_Y X do?" where Y is constant across all X's. So "should" is a rigid designator -- is corresponds to the same set of values no matter who we're asking about.
Now the subjectivity may appear to come in because two different people might have a different Y in mind when they ask "what should X do?" The answer depends on who's asking! Subjectivity!
Actually, no. The answer only depends on what the asker means by should. If should = should_Y, then it doesn't matter who's asking or who they're asking about, we'll get the same answer. If should = should_X, the same conclusion follows. The apparent subjectivity comes from thinking that there is a separate "should" apart from any "should_X, and then subtly changing the definition of "should" when someone different asks or someone different is asked about.
Now many metaethicists may still have a problem with the theory related to what's driving it's apparent subjectivity, but calling it subjective is incorrect.
I'll note that the particular semantics I'm using are widely regarded to confuse readers into thinking the theory is a form of subjectivism or moral relativism -- and frankly, I agree with the criticism. Using this terminology just so happen to be how I finally understood the theory, so it's appealing to me. Let's try a different terminology (hat tip to wedrifid): every time I wrote should_X, read that as would_want_X. In other words, should_X = would_want_X = X's implicit preferences -- what X would want if X were able to take into account all n-order preferences she has in our somewhat simplified example. Then, in the strongest form of EY's theory, should = would_want_Human. In other words, only would_want_Human has normativity. Every time we ask "what should X do?" we're asking "what would_want_Human X do?" which gives the same answer no matter who X is or who is asking the question (though nonhumans won't often ask this question).
he answer you get is the answer to "what should_X X do?" On EY's theory, when you ask "what should X do?", the answer you get is the answer to "what should_Y X do?" where Y is constant across all X's.
Y is presuably varying wth somethjng, or why put it in?.
. The apparent subjectivity comes from thinking that there is a separate "should" apart from any "should_X, and then subtly changing the definition of "should" when someone different asks or someone different is asked about.
I don't follow. Thin...
In You Provably Can't Trust Yourself, Eliezer tried to figured out why his audience didn't understand his meta-ethics sequence even after they had followed him through philosophy of language and quantum physics. Meta-ethics is my specialty, and I can't figure out what Eliezer's meta-ethical position is. And at least at this point, professionals like Robin Hanson and Toby Ord couldn't figure it out, either.
Part of the problem is that because Eliezer has gotten little value from professional philosophy, he writes about morality in a highly idiosyncratic way, using terms that would require reading hundreds of posts to understand. I might understand Eliezer's meta-ethics better if he would just cough up his positions on standard meta-ethical debates like cognitivism, motivation, the sources of normativity, moral epistemology, and so on. Nick Beckstead recently told me he thinks Eliezer's meta-ethical views are similar to those of Michael Smith, but I'm not seeing it.
If you think you can help me (and others) understand Eliezer's meta-ethical theory, please leave a comment!
Update: This comment by Richard Chappell made sense of Eliezer's meta-ethics for me.