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XiXiDu comments on What is Metaethics? - Less Wrong
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I am increasingly getting the perception that morality/ethics is useless hogwash. I already believed that to be the case before Less Wrong and I am not sure why I ever bothered to take it seriously again. I guess I was impressed that people who are concerned with 'refining the art of rationality' talk about it and concluded that after all there must be something to it. But I have yet to come across a single argument that would warrant the use of any terminology related to moral philosophy.
The article Say Not "Complexity" should have been about morality. Say not "morality"...
Consider the following questions:
All questions ask for the same, yet each one is less vague than the previous one.
It is as obvious as it can get that there is no single argument against deliberately building a paperclip maximizer if I want to build one and are aware of the consequences. It is not a question about morality but solely a question about wants.
The whole talk about morality seems to be nothing more than a signaling game.
The only reasons we care about other people is either to survive, i.e. get what we want, or because it is part of our preferences to see other people being happy. Accordingly, trying to maximize happiness for everybody can be framed in the language of volition rather than morality.
Once we get rid of the moral garbage, thought experiments like the trolley problem are no more than a question about one's preferences.
I would argue that the problem is not with morality, but with how it is being approached here.
This is a starting point for understanding morality.
is utilitarianism, which seems to be the house approach to morality - the very approach which you find unpersuasive.
Not quite. It's possible to wish a person dead, while being reluctant to kill him yourself, and even while considering anyone who does kill him a murderer who needs to be caught and brought to justice. Morality derives from preferences in a way, but it is indirect. An analogous phenomenon is the market price. The market price of a good derives from the preferences of everyone participating in the market, but the derivation is indirect. The price of a good isn't merely what you would prefer to pay for it, because that's always zero. Nor is it merely what the seller would prefer to be paid for it, because there is no upper limit on what he would charge if he could. Rather, the market price is set by supply and demand, and supply and demand depend in large part on preferences. So price derives from preferences, but the derivation is indirect, and it is mediated by interaction between people. Morality, I think, is similar. It derives from preferences indirectly, by way of interaction. This leaves open the possibility that morality is as variable as prices, but I think that because of the preferences that it rests on, it is much, much less variable, though not invariable. Natural selection holds these preferences largely in check. For example, if some genetic line of people were to develop a preference for being slaughtered, they would quickly die out.
This just shows that human wants are inconsistent, that humans are holding conflicting ideas simultaneously, why invoke 'morality' in this context?
People or road blockades, what's the difference? I just don't see why one would talk about morality here. The preferences of other people are simply more complex road blockades on the way towards your goal. Some of those blockades are artistically appealing so you try to be careful in removing them...why invoke 'morality' in this context?
But these two desires are not inconsistent, because for someone to die by, say, natural causes, is not the same thing as for him to die by your own hand.
You could say the same thing about socks. E.g., "I just don't see why one would talk about socks here. Socks are simply complex arrangements of molecules. Why invoke "sock" in this context?"
What are you going to do instead of invoking "sock"? Are you going to describe the socks molecule by molecule as a way of avoiding using the word "sock"? That would be cumbersome, to say the least. Nor would it be any more true. Socks are real. They aren't imaginary. That they're made out of molecules does not stop them from being real.
All this can be said about morality. What are you going to do instead of invoking "morality"? Are you going to describe people's reactions as a way of avoiding using the word "morality"? That would be cumbersome, to say the least. Nor would it be any more true. Morality is real. It isn't imaginary. That it's made out of people's reactions doesn't stop it from being real.
Denying the reality of morality simply because it is made out of people's reactions, is like denying the reality of socks simply because they're made out of molecules.
Consider the the trolley problem. Naively you kill the fat guy if you care about other people and also if you only care about yourself, because you want others to kill the fat guy as well because you are more likely to be one of the many people tied to the rails than the fat guy.
Of course there is the question about how killing one fat guy to save more people and similar decisions could erode society. Yet it is solely a question about wants, about the preferences of the agents involved. I don't see how it could be helpful to add terminology derived from moral philosophy here or elsewhere.
It is meaningful wherever it is meaningful to discuss whether there are wants people should and shouldn't have.
I am going to use moral terminology in the appropriate cultural context. But why would one use it on a site that supposedly tries to dissolve problems using reductionism as a general heuristic? I am also using the term "free will" because people model their decisions according to that vague and ultimately futile concept. But if possible (if I am not too lazy) I avoid using any of those bogus memes.
Of course, it is real. Cthulhu is also real, it is a fictional cosmic entity. But if someone acts according to their fear of Cthulhu I am not going to resolve their fear by talking about it in terms of the Lovecraft Mythos but in terms of mental illness.
How so? Can you give an example where the use of terminology derived from moral philosophy is useful instead of obfuscating?
Consider the Is–ought problem. The basis for every ought statement is what I believe to be correct with respect to my goals.
If you want to reach a certain goal and I want to help you and believe to know a better solution than you do then I tell you what you ought to do because 1.) you want to reach a goal 2.) I want you to reach your goal 3.) my brain does exhibit a certain epistemic state making me believe to be able to satisfy #1 & #2.
It is no more a philosophical puzzle that needs dissolving than prices are a philosophical puzzle that need dissolving.
I think that the concept of "free will" may indeed be more wholly a philosopher's invention, just as the concept of "qualia" is in my view wholly a philosopher's invention. But the everyday concepts from which it derives are not a philosopher's invention. I think that the everyday concept that philosophers turned into the concept of "free will" is the concept of the uncoerced and intentional act - a concept employed when we decide what to do about people who've annoyed us. We ask: did he mean to do it? Was he forced to do it? We have good reason for asking these questions.
Philosophers invent bogus memes that we should try to free ourselves of. I think that "qualia" are one of those memes. But philosophers didn't invent morality. They simply talked a lot of nonsense about it.
Morality is real in the sense that prices are real and in a sense that Cthulhu is not real.
Some people talk about money in the way that you want to talk about morality, so that's a nice analogy to our discussion and I'll spend a couple of paragraphs on it. They say that the value of money is merely a collective delusion - that I value a dollar only because other people value a dollar, and that they value a dollar only because, ultimately, I value a dollar. So they say that it's all a great big collective delusion. They say that if people woke up one day and realized that a dollar was just a piece of paper, then we would stop using dollars.
But while there is a grain of truth to that (especially about fiat money), there's also much that's misleading in it. Money is a medium of exchange that solves real problems. The value of money may be in a sense circular (i.e., it's valued by people because it's valued by people), but actually a lot of things are circular. A lot of natural adaptations are circular, for example symbiosis. Flowers are the way they are because bees are the way they are, and bees are the way they are because flowers are the way they are. But flowers and bees aren't a collective delusion. They're in a symbiotic relationship that has gradually evolved over a very long period of time. Money is similar - it is a social institution that evolves over a long period of time, and it can reappear when it's suppressed. For example cigarettes can become money if nothing else is available.
And all this is analogous to the situation with morality. In both cases, there's a real phenomenon which some people think is fictional, a collective delusion.
In contrast, religion really is a collective delusion. At least, all those other religions are. :)
The term "morality" is not derived from philosophy. Philosophers have simply talked a lot of nonsense about morality. This doesn't mean they invented it. Similarly, philosophers have talked a lot of nonsense about motion (e.g. Zeno's paradoxes). This doesn't mean that motion is a concept that philosophers invented and that we need to "dissolve". We can still talk sensibly about velocity. What we need to dissolve is not velocity, but simply Zeno's paradoxes about velocity, which by some accounts were dissolved as a side-effect of the creation of Calculus.
That is an example of the philosophical nonsense I was talking about. If you want to dissolve something, dissolve that nonsense. In reality you are no more likely to push a fat guy onto the rails than you are to ask for the fat guy's seat. In reality we know what the rules are and we obey them.
Again, the relevant terminology, which in this case includes the word "murder", is not derived from philosophy. Philosophers simply took a pre-existing concept and talked a lot of nonsense about it.
Actually, I think that the use of the word "ought" in relationship to morality is very confusing, because "ought" means a lot of things, and so if you use that word you are apt to confuse those things with each other. In particular, the word "ought" is used a lot in the context of personal advice. If you're giving a friend advice, you're likely to talk about what they "ought" to do. In this context, you are not making statements about morality!
The person to blame for the confusion caused by using the word "ought" in talking about morality is probably Hume. I think that it was he who started this particular bit of nonsense going.
Here you're talking about giving personal advice to somebody. This is a separate subject from morality.
You haven't demonstrated that the basis for every ought statement is what you believe to be correct with respect to your goals. If your goal is to kill as many people as possible, you ought not to pursue it..that is the there are oughts about the nature of an end and not just about how to achieve it. This is a very well known issue in moral philosophy called the categorial/hypothetical distinction.
Imagine your friend tells you that he found a new solution to reach one of your goals. If you doubt that his solution is better than your current solution then you won't adopt your friends solution.
It is true that both your solutions might be incorrect, that there might exist a correct solution that you ought (would want) to embrace if you knew about it. But part of what you want is to do what you believe to be correct. It is at best useless to assume that you might be mistaken, because you can only do the best you can possibly do.
That's all irrelevant. You need to show that there are no categorical rights and wrongs. You are just discussing certain aspects of hypothetical (instrumental) "shoulds", which does not do that.
Why should we think that there are categorical rights and wrongs?
I just don't see any convincing reason to believe they exist.
EDIT: Not to mention, it isn't clear what it would mean - in a real physical sense - for something to be categorically right or wrong.
We do think there are categorical rights and wrongs, because it is common sense that designing better gas chambers is not good, however well you do it. So the burden is on the makers of the extraordinary claim.
know what it means for a set to be uncountable, and I don't have the faintest idea what that has to do with the really physical. So that is perhaps unimportant. Perhaps you are stuck in a loop where you can't understand what other people understand because you have a strange notion of meaning.
I don't need to do that if I don't want to do that. If you want me to act according to categorical rights and wrongs then you need to show me that they exist.
You need to do certain things in order to hold a rational discussion, just as you need to do certain things to play chess. I don't have to concede that you can win a chess game without putting my king in check, and I don't have to concede that you can support a conclusion without arguing the points that need arguing. Of course, you don't have to play chess or be rational in any absolute sense. It's just that you can't have your cake and eat it.
Categorical good and evil is a different concept to the hypothetical/instrumental version: the categorical trumps the instrumental. That appears to stymie one particular attempt at reduction. There are many other arguments.
Otherwise known as The True Knowledge.
Talking about wants isn't necessarily any simpler than talking about shoulds.
We seem to be just as confused about either. For instance, how many people say they want to be thin, yet overeat and avoid exercise?
I think "I want to be thin" has an implied "ceteris paribus". Ceteris ain't paribus.
You could as well say, "How many people say they want to have money, yet spend it on housing, feeding, and clothing themselves and avoid stealing?"
I want to have money, I don't spend it on clothing, and I do avoid stealing.
Edit: This information may or may not be relevant to anyone's point.
There seems to be a difference here - how much money you earn isn't perceived as entirely a matter of choice, or at any rate there will be a significant and unavoidable lead time between deciding to earn more and actually earning more.
Whereas body shape is within our immediate sphere of control: if we eat less and work out more, we'll weigh less and bulk up muscle mass, with results expected within days to weeks.
When I say "I can move my arm if I want", this is readily demonstrated by moving my arm. Is this the same sense of "want" that people have in mind when they say "I want to eat less" or "I want to quit smoking"?
The distinction that seems to appear here is between volition - making use of the connection between our brains and our various actuators - and preference - the model we use to evaluate whether an imagined state of the world is more desirable than another. We conflate both in the term "want".
We are often quite confused as to what volitions will bring about states of the world that agree with our preferences. (How many times have you heard "That's not what I wanted to say/write"?)
I categorically reject your disanalogy from both directions.
I have been eating about half as much as usual for the past week or so, because I'm on antibiotics that screw with my appetite. I look the same. Once, I did physically intense jujitsu twice a week for months on end, at least quadrupling the amount of physical activity I got in each week. I looked the same. If "eating less and working out more" put my shape under my "immediate sphere of control" with results "within days to weeks", this would not be the result. You are wrong. Your statements may apply to people with certain metabolic privileges, but not beyond.
By contrast, if I suddenly decide that I want more money, I have a number of avenues by which I could arrange that, at least on a small scale. It would be mistaken of me to conclude from this abundance of available financial opportunity that everyone chooses to have the amount of money they have, and that people with less money are choosing to take fewer of the equally abundant opportunities they share with the rich.
OK, allowing that the examples may have been poorly chosen - the main point I'm making is that people often a) say they want something, b) act in ways that do not bring about what they say they want.
Your response above seems to be that when people say "I want to be thin", they are speaking strictly in terms of preference: they are expressing that they would prefer their world to be just as it is now, with the one amendment that they are a certain body type rather than their current. Similarly when saying they want money.
There are other cases where volition and preferences appear at odds more clearly. People say "I want to quit smoking", but they don't, when it's their own voluntary actions which bring about an undesired state. The distinction seems useful, even if we may disagree on the specifics of how hard it is to align volition and preference in particular cases.
I'm not the first to observe that "What do you want" is a deeper question than it looks like, and that's what I meant to say in the original comment.
When you examine it closely "do people actually want to smoke" isn't a much simpler question than "should there be a law against people smoking" or "is it right or wrong to smoke". It is possible that these questions are in fact entangled in such a way that to fully answer one is also to answer the others.
I think people sometimes use wanting language strictly in terms of preferences. I think people sometimes have outright contradictory wants. I think people are subject to compulsive or semi-compulsive behaviors that make calling "revealed preference!" on their actions a risky business. The post you linked to (I can't quite tell by your phrasing if you are aware that I wrote it) is about setting priorities between various desiderata, not about declaring some of those desiderata unreal because they take a backseat.
Yup.
Not sure if you mean to imply I've been saying that. That wasn't my intention.
This all seems true with the exception of 'by contrast'. You seem to have clearly illustrated a similarity between weight loss and financial gain. There are things that are under people's control but which things are under a given person's control vary by the individual and the circumstances. In both cases people drastically overestimate the extent to which the outcome is a matter of 'choice'.
The "by contrast" paragraph is meant to illustrate how and why I reject the disanalogy "from both directions".
The real distinction is between what you want to do now and what you want your future self to do later, though there's some word confusion obscuring that point. English is pretty bad at dealing with these types of distinctions, which is probably why this is a recurring discussion item.
People aren't confused about what they want in any given moment. They want to eat donuts, but they don't want to have eaten donuts. They don't want to exercise, but they do want to have exercised.
This is a pretty good reason humans not as a single moral agent, but as a collection of past, present, and future moral agents.
Oughts are instrumental and wants are terminal. See my comments here and here.
Disagree - I don't think that is supported by the dictionary. For instance, I want more money - which is widely regarded as being instrumental.
Maybe you need to spell out what you actually meant here.
Oughts and wants are not mutually exclusive in their first-order desirability. You ought to do what you want is a basic axiom of volition. That implies that you also want what you ought. Yet a distinction, if minor, between ought and want is that the former is often a second-order desire as it is instrumental to the latter primary goal.
Again, whether you ought to do what you want depends on what you want.
Can you demonstrate that what you just said is true?
EDIT: And perhaps provide a definition of "ought"?
Wants are fairly straighforwads, but oughts are often tangled up with society, manipulation and signalling. You appear to be presuming some other definition of ought - without making it terribly clear what it is that you are talking about.
When it comes to goals then in a sense an intelligent agent is similar to a stone rolling down a hill, both are moving towards a sort of equilibrium. The difference is that intelligence is following more complex trajectories as its ability to read and respond to environmental cues is vastly greater than that of a stone. And that is the reason why we perceive oughts to be mainly a fact about society, you ought not to be indifferent about the goals of other agents if they are instrumental to what you want.
"Ought" statements are subjectively objective as they refer to the interrelationship between your goals and the necessary actions to achieve them. "Ought" statements point out the necessary consistency between means and ends. If you need pursue action X to achieve "want" Y you ought to want to do Y.
I agree with most of this. The only reason for using the word morality is when talking to someone who does not realize that "Whatever you want." is the only answer that really can be given to the question of "What should I do next?". (Does that sentence make sense?)
The main thing I have to add to this is what Eliezer describes here. The causal 'reason' that I want people to be happy is because of the desires in my brain, but the motivational 'reason' is because happiness matches {happiness + survival + justice + individuality + ...}, which sounds stupid, but that is how I make decisions; I look for what best matches against that pattern. These two reasons are important to distinguish - "If neutrinos make me believe '2 + 3 = 6', then 2 + 3 = 5". Here, people use that world 'morality' to describe an idealized version of their decision processes rather than to describe the desires embodied in their brain in order to emphasize that point, and also because of the large number of people that find this pseudo-equivalence nonobvious.
But that is not the answer if someone wants to murder someone. What you have here is actually a reductio ad absurdam o the simplistic theory that morals=desires.
It only isn't the answer if you have a problem with that particular person being murdered, or perhaps an objection to killing as a principle. I also would object to wanton, chaotic, and criminal killings, but that is because I have a complex network of preferences that inform that objection, not because murder has some intrinsic property of absolute "wrongness".
It is all preferences, and to think otherwise is the most frequent and absurd delusion still prevalent in rationalist communities. Even when a moralistic rationalist admits that moral truths and absolutes do not exist, they continue operating as if they do. They will say:
"Well, there may not be absolute morality, but we can still tell which actions are best for (survival of human race / equality among humans / etc)."
The survival of the human race is a preference! One which not all possible agents share, as we are all keenly aware of in our discussions of the threat posed by superintelligent AI's that don't share our values. There is no obligation for any mind to adopt any values. You can complain about that reality. You can insist that your preferences are the one, true, good and noble preferences, but no rational agent is obligated, in any empirical sense, to agree with you.
If people have some of the preferences they have because they should have them, the issue of ethics has simply been pushed back a stage. You cannot knock down the whole concept of ethics just by objecting to one simplistic idea, eg. "intrinsic wrongness". Particularly when more complex ideas have been spelt out..
The most frequent and absurd delusion in rationalist circles is that you can arrive at simple solutions to complicated problems by throwing a little science at them.
Rational agents are obliged to believe what can be demonstrated through reasons. Rationality is a norm. Morality is a norm too, if it is anything. You assume tactily that no reasoned demonstration of ethics can be made, but that is just an assumption. You have not done anything like enough to oblige a reasonable person to believe in the elimination of morality.
Well, when you have something substantive and meaningful to point to let me know. I suggest tabooing words like "ethics", "morality", "should", etc. If you can give me a clear reductionist description of what you're talking about in metaethics without using those words, I'd love to hear it.
There is no reason I should avoid the words "ethics", "morality", etc, in a discussion of ethics, morality, etc. It is in fact, an unreasonable request on your part.
I am also unpersuaded that I need to be a "reductionist" on the topic. The material on reductionism on this site seems to me a charter for coming up with pseudo-solutions that just sweep the problems under the rug.
My substantive point remains that you have not made a case for eliminating ethics in favour of preferences.
I'd like to hear more on this charter for pseudo-solutions. What's wrong with the mainstream LW picture? By private message or in this thread (if it's not too tangential) or in a new discussion thread.
Your substantive point is nonsensical. My physical, real world understanding of intelligent agents includes preferences. It does not include anything presently labeled "morality" and I have no idea what I would apply that label to.
I don't think you have anything concrete down there that you're talking about (I'd be excited to be wrong about this). So you can do your little philosophers dance in a world of poorly anchored words but I'm not going to take you seriously until you start talking about reality.
If you can't figure out what to apply "morality" to, that is your problem. Most people do not share it.
Alright.
I'm going to give this one last shot. Can you explain, succinctly, what you're talking about when you say "morality"?
Could you explain this further?
It just depends on if "should" is interpreted as "what would best fulfill my wants now" or "what would best fulfill your wants now" (or as something else entirely).
We can't make sense of ethical language until we realize different people mean different things by it.
And that's what morality always was in the first place. It's a way of getting other people to do otherwise than what they wanted to do. No one would be convinced by "I don't want you to kill people", but if you can convince someone that "It is wrong to kill people", then you've created conflict in that person's desires.
I wonder, in the end, if people here truly want to "be rational" about morality. Myself, I'm not rational about morality, I go along with it. I don't critique it in my personal life. For instance, I refuse to murder someone, no matter how rational it might be to murder someone.
Stick to epistemic rationality, and instrumental rationality, but avoid at all costs normative rationality, is my opinion.
This is a widespread but mistaken theory of morality. After all, we don't - and can't - convincingly say that just any old thing is "wrong". Here, I'll alternate between saying that actually wrong things are wrong, and saying that random things that you don't want are wrong.
Actually wrong: "it's wrong to kill people." Yup, it is. You just don't want it: "it's wrong for you to arrest me just because I stabbed this innocent bystander to death." Yeah, right. Actually wrong: "it's wrong to mug people." No kidding. You just don't want it: "it's wrong for you to lock your door when you leave the house, because it's wrong for you to do anything to prevent me from coming into your house and taking everything you own to sell on the black market". Not convincing.
If there were nothing more to things being wrong than that you use the word "wrong" to get people to do things, then there would be no difference between these four attempts to get people to do something. But there is: in the first and third case, the claim that the action is wrong is true (and therefore makes a convincing argument). In the second and fourth case, the claim is false (and therefore makes for an unconvincing argument).
Sure, you can use the word "wrong" to get people to do things that you want them to do, but you can use a lot of words for that. For example, if you're somebody's mother and you want them to avoid driving when they're very sleepy, you can tell them that it's "dangerous" to drive in that condition. But as with the word "wrong", you can't use the word "dangerous" for just any situation, because it's not true in just any situation. When a proposed action is really dangerous - or really wrong - then you can use that fact to convince them not to pursue that action. But it's still a fact, independent of whether you use it to get other people to do things you want.
Objective ethics on LW? I'm a little shocked. This whole post is basically argument from popularity (perhaps more accurate to call it argument from convincingness). Judgments of valuation may be universal or quasi-universal, but they are always subjective. Words like "right" and "wrong" (and "innocent" and "own") and other objective moralistic terms obscure this, so let me do some un-obscuring.
You have this backwards: The claim makes a convincing argument (to you and many others), therefore you call the claim "right"; or the claim makes an unconvincing argument against the action, therefore you call the claim "wrong."
Notice you had to tuck in the word "innocent," which already implies your conclusion that it is "actually wrong" to harm the bystander.
Here you used the word "own," which again already implies your conclusion that it is wrong to steal it. Both examples are purely circular. Most people are disgusted by killing and theft, and they may be counterproductive from most people's points of view, but that is just about all we can say about the matter - and all we need to say. We are disgusted, so we ban such actions.
Moral right and wrong are not objective facts. The fact that you and I subjectively experience a moral reaction to killing and theft may be an objective fact, but the wrongness itself is not objective, even though it may be universal or near-universal (that is, even though almost everyone else may feel the same way). Universal subjective valuation is not objective valuation (this latter term is, I contend, completely meaningless - unless someone can supply a useful definition).
Although he was speaking in the context of economics, Ludwig von Mises gave the most succinct explanation of why all valuation is subjective when he said, "We originally want or desire an object not because it is agreeable or good, but we call it agreeable or good because we want or desire it."
You could say that about any word in the English language. Let's try this with the word "rain". On many occasions, a person may say "it's raining and therefore you should take an umbrella". On some occasions this claim will be false and people will know that it's false (e.g. because they looked out a window and saw that it wasn't raining), and so the argument will not be convincing.
What you're doing here can be applied to this rain scenario. You could say:
That is, the claim that it's raining makes a convincing argument on some occasions, and on those occasions you call the claim "right". On other occasions, the claim makes an unconvincing argument, and on those occasions you call the claim "wrong".
So there, we've applied your theory about the concept of morality, to the concept of rain. Your theory could equally well be applied to any concept at all. That is, your theory is that when we are convinced by arguments that employ claims about morality, then we call the claims "right". But you could equally well come up with the theory that when we are convinced by arguments that employ claims about rain, then we call the claims "right".
So what have we demonstrated? With your help, we have demonstrated that in this respect, morality is like rain. And like everything else. Morality is like atoms. Morality is like gravity - in this respect. You have highlighted a property of morality which is shared by absolutely everything else in the universe that we have a word for. And this property is, that you can come up with this reverse theory of it, according to which we call claims employing the term "right" when we are convinced by arguments using those claims.
For me to be guilty of begging the question I would have to be trying to prove that a murder was committed in the hypothetical scenario. But it's a hypothetical scenario in which it is specified that the person committed murder.
Here's the hypothetical scenario, more explicit: someone has just committed a murder. He tells a cop, "it would be wrong for you to arrest me". Since it is not, in fact, wrong for the cop to arrest him, then the argument is unconvincing. In this hypothetical scenario, the reason the argument is unconvincing is that it is not actually wrong for the cop to arrest him.
Now, according to your own reverse theory of morality, the hypothetical scenario that I have specified in fact reduces to the following: someone is in a situation where his claims that it would be wrong to arrest him will go ignored by the cop in question. Therefore, the cop believes that it is right to arrest him.
But as I explained before, you can apply your reverse treatment to absolutely anything at all. Here's an example: in this scenario, someone picks up an orange and says about the orange, "this is an apple". Nobody is convinced by his assertion, and the reason nobody is convinced by his assertion is that the orange is, in fact, not an apple.
Now we can apply your reverse treatment to this scenario. Someone picks up something and says about it, "this is an apple". Nobody is convinced by his assertion, and therefore they call his claim "wrong".
Notice the reversal. In my description of the scenario, that the claim is wrong causes others to disbelieve the claim, because they can see with their own eyes that it is wrong. In your reverse description of the scenario, the primary fact is that people are not convinced by the claim, and the secondary fact which follows from the primary fact is that they call the claim "wrong".
You're not proving anything with the reversal, because you can apply the reversal to anything at all.
Once again, this is a hypothetical scenario in which it is specified that it would be stealing, and therefore wrong. I am not trying to prove that; I am specifying it to construct the scenario.
Absolutely, but morality is not personal preference any more than price is personal preference. These are separate subjects. Mises would not say, "I recognize that the price of gasoline is $4 not because it is $4; rather, the price of gasoline is $4 because I recognize it as $4, and if tomorrow I recognize it as $2 then it will be $2, whatever the gas station attendant says." That would be absurd for him to say. The same applies to morality.
You misread me, though perhaps that was my fault. Does the bold help? I was talking about you (Constant), not "you" in the general sense. I wasn't presenting a theory of morality; I was shedding light on yours by suggesting that you are only calling these things right or wrong because you find the arguments convincing.
No, you'd have to be trying to justify your statement that "it is wrong to kill people," which it seems you were (likewise for the theft example). Maybe your unusual phrasing confused me as to what you were trying to show with that. Anyway, the daughter posts seem to show we agree on more than it appears here, so bygones.
As for the rest about "[my] reverse theory of morality," that's all from the above misunderstanding. (Sorry to waste time with my unclear wording.)
Okay, but even on this reading you could "shed" similar "light" on absolutely any term that I ever use. You're not proving anything special about morality by that. To do that would require finding differences between morality and, say, rain, or apples. But if we were arguing about apples you could make precisely the same move that you made in this discussion about morality.
Here's a parallel back-and-forth employing apples. Somebody says:
I reply:
Here, let me construct an example with apples. Somebody goes to Tiffany's, points to a large diamond on display, and says to an employee, "that is an apple, therefore you should be willing to sell it to me for five dollars, which is a great price for an apple." This claim is false, and therefore makes for an unconvincing argument.
Somebody replies:
* I interpret "right" and "wrong" here as meaning "true" and "false", because claims are true or false, and these are referring to claims here.
To which they follow up:
** I am continuing the previous interpretation of "right" and "wrong" as meaning, in context here, "true" or "false". If this is not what you meant then I can easily substitute in what you actually meant, make the corresponding changes, and make the same point as I am making here.
What all this boils down to is that my interlocutor is saying that I am only calling claims about apples true or false because I find the arguments that employ these claims convincing or unconvincing. For example, if I happen to be in Tiffany's and somebody points to one of the big shiny glassy-looking things with an enormous price tag and says to an employee, "that is an apple, and therefore you should be happy to accept $5 for it", then I will find that person's argument unconvincing. My interlocutor's point is that I am only calling that person's claim (that that object is an apple) false because I find his argument (that the employee should sell it to him for $5) unconvincing.
Whereas my own account is as follows: I first of all find the person's claim about the shiny glassy thing false. Then, as a consequence, I find his argument (that the employee should be happy to part with it for $5) unconvincing.
If you like I can come up with yet another example, taking place in Tiffany's, dropping the apple, and introducing some action such as grabbing a diamond and attempting to leave the premises. I would have my account (that I, a bystander, saw the man grab the diamond, which I believed to be a wrong act, and therefore when security stopped him I was not persuaded by his claims that he had done nothing wrong), and you would have your reversed account (that I was not persuaded by his claims that he had done nothing wrong, and therefore, as a consequence, I believed his grabbing the diamond to be a wrong act).
That's one of the things morality has been, and it could indeed be the main thing, but my point above is it all depends on what the person means. Even though getting other people to do something might be the main and most important role of moral language historically, it only invites confusion to overgeneralize here - though I know how tempting it is to simplify all this ethical nonsense floating around in one fell swoop. Some people do simply use "ought" to mean, "It is in your best interest to," without any desire to get the person to do something. Some people mean "God would disapprove," and maybe they really don't care if that makes you refrain from doing it or not, but they're just letting you know. These little counterexamples ruin the generalization, then we're back to square one.
I think the only way to really simplify ethics is to acknowledge that people mean all sorts of things by it, and let each person - if anyone cares - explain what they intended in each case.
No, scratch that. The reason ethics is so confused is precisely because people have tried to simplify a whole bunch of disparate-but-somewhat-interrelated notions into a single type of phrasing. A full explanation of everything that is called "ethics" would require examination of religion, politics, sociology, psychology, and much more.
For most things that we think we want ethics for, such as AI, instead of trying to figure out that complex of sundry notions shoehorned into the category of ethics, I think we'd be better off just assiduously hugging the query for each question we want to answer about how to get the results we want in the "moral" sphere (things that hit on your moral emotions, like empathy, indignation, etc.). Mostly I'm interested in this series of posts for the promise it presents for doing away with most of the confusion generated by wordplay such as "objective ethics," which I consider to be just an artifact of language.
One thing it seems to be used for around here is "what should you never do even if you should". E.g. it's usually a really bad idea (wrt your own wants) to murder someone, even in a large proportion of cases where you think it's a good idea.
What if "should" is interpreted as "Instantiators of decision theories similar to this one would achieve a higher value on their utility function if similar decision theories would yield this action as output"?
If you don't want someone to murder, you can try to stop them, but they aren't going to agree to not murder unless they want to.
Want to before they have had their preferences re arranged by moral exhortation, or after?
I was referring to only fully logical arguments. Obviously it is possible to prevent someone from murdering by expressing extreme disapproval or locking them up.
If you are confused about facts in the world then you are talking about epistemic rationality, why would one invoke 'morality' in this context?
I'm not sure I understand this. Are you objecting to my use of the word 'idealized', on the grounds that preferences and facts are different things and uncertainty is about facts? I would disagree with that. Someone might have two conflicting but very strong preferences. For example, someone might be opposed to homosexuality based on a feeling of disgust but also have a strong feeling that people should have some sort of right to self-determination. Upon sufficient thought, they may decide that the latter outweighs the former and may stop feeling disgust at homosexuals as a result of that introspection. I believe that this situation is one that occurs regularly among humans.
You correctly point out problems with classical utilitarianism; nonetheless, downvoted for equating utilitarianism in general with classical utilitarianism in particular, as well as being irrelevant to the comment it was replying to. And a few other things.
I agree with you that morality can mostly be framed in terms of volation and an adequate decision theory, but I think you are oversimplifying. For example consider people talking about what other people should want purely for their own good. That might be explainable in terms of projecting their own wants in some way (or perhaps selfish self-delusion), but it doesn't seem like something you could easily predict in advance from reasoning about wants if you were unfamiliar with how people act among each other.
Am not clear from your comment what your beef is.
No: morality is also to do with how to behave yourself and ways of manipulating others in addition to its signalling role.
You just did use it.
Now, in this case we could probably rephrase your statement without too much trouble. But it does not seem at all obvious that doing this for all of our beliefs has positive expected value if we just want to maximize epistemic or instrumental rationality.