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endoself comments on What is Metaethics? - Less Wrong
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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"?
concern with the distinction between good and evil or right and wrong; right or good conduct
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).
It seems to me that right and wrong being objective, just like truth and falsehood, is what you've been trying to prove all this time. To equate "right and wrong" with "true and false" by assumption would be to, well you know, beg the question. It's not surprising that it always comes back to circularity, because a circular argument is the same in effect as an unjustified assertion, and in fact that's become the theme of not just our exchange here, but this entire thread: "objective ethics are true by assertion."
I think we agreed elsewhere that ethical sentiments are at least quasi-universal; is there something else we needed to agree on? Because the rest just looks like wordplay to me.
But, ah, you can observe the properties of the object in question, and see that it has very few in common with the set of things that has generated the term "apple" in your mind, and many in common with "diamond". Is this the same sense in which you say we can simply "recognize" things as fundamentally good or evil? That would make these terms refer to "what my parents thought was good or evil, perturbed by a generation of meaning-learning". The problem there is - apples are generally recognizable. People disagree on what is right or wrong. Are even apples objective?
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.