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NMJablonski comments on What is Metaethics? - Less Wrong
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Why do you believe there exists a Correct Theory of Morality?
Why do you believe there exists a Correct Theory of Physics?
As Constant points out here all the arguments based on reductionism that you're using could just as easily be used to argue that there is no correct theory of physics.
One difference between physics and morality is that there is currently a lot more consensus about what the correct theory of physics looks like then what the correct theory of morality looks like. However, that is a statement about the current time, if you were to go back a couple centuries you'd find that there was as little consensus about the correct theory of physics as there is today about the correct theory of morality.
It's not an argument by reductionism...it's simply trying to figure out how to interpret the words people are using - because it's really not obvious. It only looks like reductionism because someone asks, "What is morality?" and the answer comes: "Right and wrong," then "What should be done," then "What is admirable"... It is all moralistic language that, if any of it means anything, it all means the same thing.
Well the original argument, way back in the thread, was NMJablonski arguing against the existence of a "Correct Theory of Morality" by demanding that Peter provide "a clear reductionist description of what [he's] talking about" while "tabooing words like 'ethics', 'morality', 'should', etc.
My point is that NMJablonski's request is about as reasonable as demanding that someone arguing for the existence of a "Correct Theory of Physics" provide a clear reductionist description of what one means while tabooing words like 'physics', 'reality', 'exists', 'experience', etc.
Fair enough, though I suspect that by asking for a "reductionist" description NMJablonski may have just been hoping for some kind of unambiguous wording.
My point, and possibly Peter's, is that given our current state of knowledge about meta-ethics I can give no better definition of the words "should"/"right"/"wrong" than the meaning they have in everyday use.
Note, following my analogy with physics, that historically we developed a systematic way for judging the validity of statements about physics, i.e., the scientific method, several centuries before developing a semi-coherent meta-theory of physics, i.e., empiricism and Bayseanism. With morality we're not even at the "scientific method" stage.
This is consistent with Jablonski's point that "it's all preferences."
In keeping with my physics analogy, saying "it's all preferences" about morality is analogous to saying "it's all opinion" about physics.
Clearly there's a group of people who dislike what I've said in this thread, as I've been downvoted quite a bit.
I'm not perfectly clear on why. My only position at any point has been this:
I see a universe which contains intelligent agents trying to fulfill their preferences. Then I see conversations about morality and ethics talking about actions being "right" or "wrong". From the context and explanations, "right" seems to mean very different things. Like:
"Those actions which I prefer" or "Those actions which most agents in a particular place prefer" or "Those actions which fulfill arbitrary metric X"
Likewise, "wrong" inherits its meaning from whatever definition is given for "right". It makes sense to me to talk about preferences. They're important. If that's what people are talking about when they discuss morality, then that makes perfect sense. What I do not understand is when people use the words "right" or "wrong" independently of any agent's preferences. I don't see what they are referring to, or what those words even mean in that context.
Does anyone care to explain what I'm missing, or if there's something specific I did to elicit downvotes?
You signaled disagreement with someone about morality. What did you expect? :)
I don't know anything about downvotes, but I do think that there is a way of understanding 'right' and 'wrong' independently of preferences. But it takes a conceptual shift.
Don't think of morality as a doctrine guiding you as to how to behave. Instead, imagine it as a doctrine teaching you how to judge the behavior of others (and to a lesser extent, yourself).
Morality teaches you when to punish and reward (and when to expect punishment and reward). It is a second-order concept, and hence not directly tied to preferences.
In keeping with my analogy let's translate your position into the corresponding position on physics:
Do you still agree with the changed version? If not, why not?
(I never realized how much fun it could be to play a chronophone.)
I don't understand what you mean by preferences when you say "intelligent agents trying to fulfill their preferences". I have met plenty of people who were trying to do things contrary to their preferences. Perhaps before you try (or someone tries for you) to distinguish morality from preferences, it might be helpful to distinguish precisely how preferences and behavior can differ?
Assuming Amanojack explained your position correctly, then there aren't just people fulfilling their preferences. There are people doing all kinds of things that fulfill or fail to fulfill their preferences - and, not entirely coincidentally, which bring happiness and grief to themselves or others. So then a common reasonable definition of morality (that doesn't involve the word preferences) is that set of habits that are most likely to bring long-term happiness to oneself and those around one.
Same here.
It doesn't mean any of those things, since any of them can be judged wrong.
Morality is about having the right preferences, as rationality is about having true beliefs.
Do you think the sentence "there are truths no-one knows" is meaningful?
For the record, I think in this thread Eugine_Nier follows a useful kind of "simple truth", not making errors as a result, while some of the opponents demand sophistication in lieu of correctness.
I think we're demanding clarity and substance, not sophistication. Honestly I feel like one of the major issues with moral discussions is that huge sophisticated arguments can emerge without any connection to substantive reality.
I would really appreciate it if someone would taboo the words "moral", "good", "evil", "right", "wrong", "should", etc. and try to make the point using simpler concepts that have less baggage and ambiguity.
No matter what opinions anyone holds about gravity, objects near the surface of the earth not subject to other forces accelerate towards the earth at 9.8 meters per second per second. This is an empirical fact about physics, and we know ways our experience could be different if it were wrong. Do you have an example of a fact about morality, independent of preferences, such that we could notice if it is wrong?
Killing innocent people is wrong barring extenuating circumstances.
(I'll taboo the "weasel words" innocent and extenuating circumstances as soon as you taboo the "weasel words" near the surface of the earth and not subject to other forces.
I'm not sure it's possible for my example to be wrong anymore then its possible for 2+2 to equal 3.
I don't think you can explicate such a connection, especially not without any terms defined. In fact, it is just utterly pointless to try to develop a theory in a field that hasn't even been defined in a coherent way. It's not like it's close to being defined, either.
For example, "Is abortion morally wrong?" combines about 12 possible questions into it because it has a least that many interpretations. Choose one, then we can study that. I just can't see how otherwise rationality-oriented people can put up with such extreme vagueness. There is almost zero actual communication happening in this thread in the sense of actually expressing which interpretation of moral language anyone is taking. And once that starts happening it will cover way too many topics to ever reach a resolution. We're simply going to have to stop compressing all these disparate-but-subtly-related concepts into a single field, taboo all the moralist language, and hug some queries (if any important ones actually remain).
In any science I can think of people began developing it using intuitive notions, only being able to come up with definitions after substantial progress had been made.
You can assume that the words have no specific meaning and are used to signal membership in a group. This explains why the flowchart in the original post has so many endpoints about what morality might mean. It explains why there seems to be no universal consensus on what specific actions are moral and which ones are not. It also explains why people have such strong opinions about morality despite the fact that statements about morality are not subject to empirical validation.
No, the reductionist description of the Correct Theory of Physics eventually involves pointing at lab equipment. There is no lab equipment for morality, so the analogy is not valid.
I could point a gun to your head and ask you to explain why I shouldn't pull the trigger.
That scenario doesn't lead to discovering the truth. If I deceive you with bullshit and you don't pull the trigger, that's a victory for me. I invite you to try again, but next time pick an example where the participants are incentivised to make true statements.
ETA: ...unless the truth we care about is just which flavors of bullshit will persuade you not to pull the trigger. If that's what you mean by morality, you probably agree with me that it is just social signaling.
And if he gave a true moral argument you would have to accept it?
How would you distinguish a true argument from a merely persuasive one?
Like I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the "No Universally Compelling Argument" post you site applies equally well to physical and even mathematical facts (in fact that was what Eliezer was mainly referring to in that post).
In fact, the main point of that sequence is that just because there are no universally compelling arguments doesn't mean truth doesn't exist. As Eliezer mentions in where recursive justification hits bottom:
A formal proof is still a proof though, although nothing mandates that a listener must accept it. A mind can very well contain an absolute dismissal mechanism or optimize for something other than correctness.
We can understand what sort of assumptions we're making when we derive information from mathematical axioms, or the axioms of induction, and how further information follows from that. But what assumptions are we making that would allow us to extrapolate absolute moral facts? Does our process give us any way to distinguish them from preferences?
That morality is not straightforwardly empirical is part of why it is inappropriate to demand concrete definitions.
Do you believe in God? If I defended the notion of God in a similar way -- it is not straightforwardly empirical, it's inappropriate to demand concrete definitions, it's not under the domain of science, just because you can't define it and measure it doesn't mean it doesn't exist -- would you find that persuasive?
But I am only defending the idea that morality means something. Atheists think "God" means something. "uncountable set" means something even if the idea is thoroughly non-concrete.
Sure, but few-to-no atheists would say something like "'God' means something, but exactly what is an open problem."
The idea of someone refusing to say what they mean by "uncountable set" is even stranger.
All atheists have to adopt a broad definition of God, or else they would only be disbelieving in the 7th day adventist God, or whatever...ie they would believe in all deities except one, which is more than the average believer.
A correct theory of physics would inform my anticipations.
Please, taboo "anticipations".
Replace anticipations with:
My ability, as a mind (subjective observer), to construct an isomorphism in memory that corresponds to future experiences.
What's an "isomorphism in memory"? What are "future experiences"? And what does it mean for them to "correspond"?
I would be happy to continue down this line a ways longer if you would like, and we could get all the way down to the two of us in the same physical location rebuilding the concept of induction. I am confident that if necessary we could do that for "anticipations" and build our way back up. I am not confident that "morality" as it has been used here actually connects to any solid surface in reality, unless it ends up meaning the same thing as "preferences".
Do you disagree?
In that case maybe we should continue a bit longer until you're disabused of that belief. What I suspect will happen is that you'll continue to attempt to define your words in terms of more and more tenuous abstractions until the words you're using really are almost meaningless.
I think "X is what the correct theory of X says" is true for all X. The Correct Theory can say "Nothing", of course.