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Eugine_Nier comments on What is Metaethics? - Less Wrong
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Comments (550)
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? :)
Your explanation is simple and fits the facts!
I like it :)
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.
Sociology? Psychology? Game theory? Mathematics? What does moral philosophy add to the sciences that is useful, that helps us to dissolve confusion and understand the nature of reality?
Moral philosophy, like all philosophy, does nothing directly to illuminate the nature of reality. What it does is to illuminate the nature of confusion.
How does someone who thinks that 'morality' is meaningless discuss the subject with someone who attaches meaning to the word? Answer: They talk to each other carefully and respectfully.
What do you call the subject matter of that discussion? Answer: Metaethics.
What do you call success in this endeavor? Answer: "Dissolving the confusion".
Moral philosophy does not illuminate the nature of confusion, it is the confusion. I am asking, what is missing and what confusion is left if you disregard moral philosophy and talk about right and wrong in terms of preferences?
I'm tempted to reply that what is missing is the ability to communicate with anyone who believes in virtue ethics or deontological ethics, and therefore doesn't see how preferences are even involved. But maybe I am not understanding your point.
Perhaps an example would help. Suppose I say, "It is morally wrong for Alice to lie to Bob." How would you analyze that moral intuition in terms of preferences. Whose preferences are we talking about here? Alice's, Bob's, mine, everybody else's? For comparison purposes, also analyze the claim "It is morally wrong for Bob to strangle Alice."
Upvoted because I strongly agree with the spirit of this post, but I don't think moral philosophy succeeds in dissolving the confusion. So far it has failed miserably, and I suspect that it is entirely unnecessary. That is, I think this is one field that can be dissolved away.
Like if an atheist is talking to a religious person then the subject matter is metatheology?
Which metrics do I use to judge others?
There has been some confusion over the word "preference" in the thread, so perhaps I should use "subjective value". Would you agree that the only tools I have for judging others are subjective values? (This includes me placing value on other people reaching a state of subjective high value)
Or do you think there's a set of metrics for judging people which has some spooky, metaphysical property that makes it "better"?
And why would that even matter as long as I am able to realize what I want without being instantly struck by thunder if I desire or do something that violates the laws of morality? If I live a happy and satisfied life of fulfilled preferences but constantly do what is objectively wrong, why exactly would that matter, to whom would it matter and why would I care if I am happy and my preferences are satisfied? Is it some sort of game that I am losing, where those who are the most right win? What if I don't want to play that game, what if I don't care who wins?
Because it harms other people directly or indirectly. Most immoral actions have that property.
To the person you harm. To the victim's friends and relatives. To everyone in the society which is kept smoothly running by the moral code which you flout.
Because you will probably be punished, and that tends to not satisfy your preferences.
If the moral code is correctly designed, yes.
Then you are, by definition, irrational, and a sane society will eventually lock you up as being a danger to yourself and everyone else.
Begging the question.
Either that is part of my preferences or it isn't.
Either society is instrumental to my goals or it isn't.
Game theory? Instrumental rationality? Cultural anthropology?
If I am able to realize my goals, satisfy my preferences, don't want to play some sort of morality game with agreed upon goals and am not struck by thunder once I violate those rules, why would I care?
What is your definition of irrationality? I wrote that if I am happy, able to reach all of my goals and satisfy all of my preferences while constantly violating the laws of morality, how am I irrational?
I'm claiming that there is a particular moral code which has the spooky game-theoretical property that it produces the most utility for you and for others. That is, it is the metric which is Pareto optimal and which is also a 'fair' bargain.
So you're saying that there's one single set of behaviors, which, even though different agents will assign drastically different values to the same potential outcomes, balances their conflicting interests to provide the most net utility across the group. That could be true, although I'm not convinced.
Even if it is, though, what the optimal strategy is will change if the net values across the group changes. The only point I have ever tried to make in these threads is that the origin of any applicable moral value must be the subjective preferences of the agents involved.
The reason any agent would agree to follow such a rule set is if you could demonstrate convincingly that such behaviors maximize that agent's utility. It all comes down to subjective values. There exists no other motivating force.
I'm fond of including clarification like, "subjective values (values defined in the broadest possible sense, to include even things like your desire to get right with your god, to see other people happy, to not feel guilty, or even to "be good")."
Some ways I've found to dissolve people's language back to subjective utility:
If someone says something is good, right, bad, or wrong, ask, "For what purpose?"
If someone declares something immoral, unjust, unethical, ask, "So what unhappiness will I suffer as a result?"
But use sparingly, because there is a big reason many people resist dissolving this confusion.
True, but that may not be as telling an objection as you seem to think. For example, if you run into someone (not me!) who claims that the entire moral code is based on the 'Golden Rule' of "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." Tell that guy that moral behavior changes if preferences change. He will respond "Well, duh! What is your point?".
Yes! That's a point that I've repeated so often to so many different people [not on LW, though] that I'd more-or-less "given up" - it began to seem as futile as swatting flies in summer. Maybe I'll resume swatting now I know I'm not alone.
Cool! Swat away. Though I'm not particularly happy with the metaphor.
This is mainly how I use morality. I control my own actions, not the actions of other people, so for me it makes sense to judge my own actions as good or bad, right or wrong. I can change them. Judging someone else changes nothing about the state of the world unless I can persuade them to act differently.
Avoiding a person (a) does not (necessarily) persuade them to act differently, but (b) definitely changes the state of the world. This is not a minor nitpicking point. Avoiding people is also called social ostracism, and it's a major way that people react to misbehavior. It has the primary effect of protecting themselves. It often has the secondary effect of convincing the ostracized person to improve their behavior.
Then I would consider that a case where I could change their behaviour. There are instances where avoiding someone would bother them enough to have an effect, and other cases where it wouldn't.
Yes, but if you judge a particular action of your own to be 'wrong', then why should you avoid that action? The definition of wrong that I supply solves that problem. By definition if an action is wrong, then it is likely to elicit punishment. So you have a practical reason for doing right rather than doing wrong.
Furthermore, if you do your duty and reward and/or punish other people for their behavior, then they too will have a practical reason to do right rather than wrong.
Before you object "But that is not morality!", ask yourself how you learned the difference between right and wrong.
It's a valid point that I probably learned morality this way. I think that's actually the definition of 'preconventional' morality-it's based on reward/punishment. Maybe all my current moral ideas have roots in that childhood experience, but they aren't covered by it anymore. There are actions that would be rewarded by most of the people around me, but which I avoid because I consider there to be a "better" alternative. (I should be able to think of more examples of this, but I guess one is laziness at work. I feel guilty if I don't do the cleaning and maintenance that needs doing even though everyone else does almost nothing. I also try to follow a "golden rule" that if I don't want something to happen to me, I won't do it to someone else even if the action is socially acceptable amidst my friends and wouldn't be punished.
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.)
Based upon my experiences, physical truths appear to be concrete and independent of beliefs and opinions. I see no cases where "right" has a meaning outside of an agent's preferences. I don't know how one would go about discovering the "rightness" of something, as one would a physical truth.
It is a poor analogy.
Edit: Seriously? I'm not trying to be obstinate here. Would people prefer I go away?
New edit: Thanks wedrifid. I was very confused.
Please explain what the word "concrete" means independent of anyone's beliefs and opinions.
You're not being obstinate. You're more or less right, at least in the parent. There are a few nuances left to pick up but you are not likely to find them by arguing with Eugine.
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?
Example? I prefer not to stay up late, but here I am doing it. It's not that I'm acting against my preferences, because my current preference is to continue typing this sentence. It's simply that English doesn't differentiate very well between "current preferences"= "my preferences right this moment" and "current preferences"= "preferences I have generally these days."
Seinfeld said it best.
But I want an example of people acting contrary to their preferences, you're giving one of yourself acting according to your current preferences. Hopefully, NMJablonski has an example of a common action that is genuinely contrary to the actor's preferences. Otherwise, the word "preference" simply means "behavior" to him and shouldn't be used by him. He would be able to simplify "the actions I prefer are the actions I perform," or "morality is just behavior", which isn't very interesting to talk about.
"This-moment preferences" are synonymous with "behavior," or more precisely, "(attempted/wished-for) action." In other words, in this moment, my current preferences = what I am currently striving for.
Jablonski seems to be using "morality" to mean something more like the general preferences that one exhibits on a recurring basis, not this-moment preferences. And this is a recurring theme: that morality is questions like, "What general preferences should I cultivate?" (to get more enjoyment out of life)
Ok, so if I understand you correctly: It is actually meaningful to ask "what general preferences should I cultivate to get more enjoyment out of life?" If so, you describe two types of preference: the higher-order preference (which I'll call a Preference) to get enjoyment out of life, and the lower-order "preference" (which I'll call a Habit or Current Behavior rather than a preference, to conform to more standard usage) of eating soggy bland french fries if they are sitting in front of you regardless of the likelihood of delicious pizza arriving. So because you prefer to save room for delicious pizza yet have the Habit of eating whatever is nearby and convenient, you can decide to change that Habit. You may do so by changing your behavior today and tomorrow and the day after, eventually forming a new Habit that conforms better to your preference for delicious foods.
Am I describing this appropriately? If so, by the above usage, is morality a matter of Behavior, Habit, or Preference?
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.
You missed a word in my original. I said that there were agents trying to fulfill their preferences. Now, per my comment at the end of your subthread with Amanojack, I realize that the word "preferences" may be unhelpful. Let me try to taboo it:
There are intelligent agents who assign higher values to some futures than others. I observe them generally making an effort to actualize those futures, but sometimes failing due to various immediate circumstances, which we could call cognitive overrides. What I mean by that is that these agents have biases and heuristics which lead them to poorly evaluate the consequences of actions.
Even if a human sleeping on the edge of a cliff knows that the cliff edge is right next to him, he will jolt if startled by noise or movement. He may not want to fall off the cliff, but the jolt reaction occurs before he is able to analyze it. Similarly, under conditions of sufficient hunger, thirst, fear, or pain, the analytical parts of the agent's mind give way to evolved heuristics.
If that's how you would like to define it, that's fine. Would you agree then, that the contents of that set of habits is contingent upon what makes you and those around you happy?
I suspect it's a matter of degree rather than either-or. People sleeping on the edges of cliffs are much less likely to jot when startled than people sleeping on soft beds, but not 0% likely. The interplay between your biases and your reason is highly complex.
Yes; absolutely. I suspect that a coherent definition of morality that isn't contingent on those will have to reference a deity.
We are, near as I can tell, in perfect agreement on the substance of this issue. Aumann would be proud. :)
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?
I understand what it would mean to have a true belief, as truth is noticeably independent of belief. I can be surprised, and I can anticipate. I have an understanding of a physical world of which I am part, and which generates my experiences.
It does not make any sense for there to be some "correct" preferences. Unlike belief, where there is an actual territory to map, preferences are merely a byproduct of the physical processes of intelligence. They have no higher or divine purpose which demands certain preferences be held. Evolution selects for those which aid survival, and it doesn't matter if survival means aggression or cooperation. The universe doesn't care.
I think you and other objective moralists in this thread suffer from extremely anthropocentric thinking. If you rewind the universe to a time before there are humans, in a time of early expansion and the first formation of galaxies, does there exist then the "correct" preferences that any agent must strive to discover? Do they exist independent of what kinds of life evolve in what conditions?
If you are able to zoom out of your skull, and view yourself and the world around you as interesting molecules going about their business, you'll see how absurd this is. Play through the evolution of life on a planetary scale in your mind. Be aware of the molecular forces at work. Run it on fast forward. Stop and notice the points where intelligence is selected for. Watch social animals survive or die based on certain behaviors. See the origin of your own preferences, and why they are so different from some other humans.
Objective morality is a fantasy of self-importance, and a hold-over from ignorant quasi-religious philosophy which has now cloaked itself in scientific terms and hides in university philosophy departments. Physics is going to continue to play out. The only agents who can ever possibly care what you do are other physical intelligences in your light cone.
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.
Clarity can be difficult. What do you mean by "truth"?
I mean it in precisely the sense that The Simple Truth does. Anticipation control.
That's not the point. You must use your heuristics even if you don't know how they work, and avoid demanding to know how they work or how they should work as a prerequisite to being allowed to use them. Before developing technical ideas about what it means for something to be true, or what it means for something to be right, you need to allow yourself to recognize when something is true, or is right.
I'm sorry, but if we had no knowledge of brains, cognition, and the nature of preference, then sure, I'd use my feelings of right or wrong as much as the next guy, but that doesn't make them objectively true.
Likewise, just because I intuitively feel like I have a time-continuous self, that doesn't make consciousness fundamental.
As an agent, having knowledge of what I am, and what causes my experiences, changes my simple reliance on heuristics to a more accurate scientific exploration of the truth.
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.
What is the difference between:
"Killing innocent people is wrong barring extenuating circumstances"
and
"Killing innocent people is right barring extenuating circumstances"
How do you determine which one is accurate? What observable consequences does each one predict? What do they lead you to anticipate?
Moral facts don't lead me to anticipate observable consequences, but they do affect the actions I choose to take.
Preferences also do that.
Yes, well opinions also anticipate observations. But in a sense by talking about "observable consequences" your taking advantage of the fact that the meta-theory of science is currently much more developed then the meta-theory of ethics.
But some preferences can be moral, just as some opinions can be true. There is no automatic entailment from "it is a preference" to "it has nothing to do with ethics".
The question was - how do you determine what the moral facts are?
Currently, intuition. Along with the existing moral theories, such as they are.
Similar to the way people determined facts about physics, especially facts beyond the direct observation of their senses, before the scientific method was developed.
What would it take to convince you your example is wrong?
Note how "2+2=4" has observable consequences:
Does your example (or another you care to come up with) have observable consequences?
What is weasel-like with "near the surface of the earth"?
In this context, it's as "weasel-like" as "innocent". In the sense that both are fudge factors you need to add to the otherwise elegant statement to make it true.
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.