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TimFreeman comments on What is Metaethics? - Less Wrong
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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.
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.
This gets silly.
"Do you believe in woojits?" Well, no, I don't.
"Ah, well, if you disbelieve in woojits, then you must know what woojits are! So, what are woojits?" I have no idea.
"But how is that possible? If you don't have a definition for woojits, on what basis do you reject belief in them?" Having a well-defined notion of something is a prerequisite for belief in it; I don't have a well-defined notion of woojits; therefore I don't believe in woojits.
"No, no. You're confused. All woojit-disbelievers have to adopt a broad definition of woojits in order to disbelieve in them; otherwise they would merely disbelieve in a specific woojit." (shrug) OK, if you like, I have a broad definition of woojit... so broad, in fact, that it is effectively identical to my definition of all the other concepts I don't believe in and haven't thought about, which is the overwhelming majority of all possible concepts. For my part, I consider this equivalent to not having a definition of woojit at all.
As I say, this gets silly. It's just arguing about definitions of words.
Now, I would agree that atheists who grow up in theist cultures do have a definition of God, though I disagree with you that it's necessarily broad: I know at least one atheist who was raised Roman Catholic, for example, and the god he disbelieves in is the Roman Catholic god of his youth, and the idea that "God" might conceivably refer to anything else just doesn't have a lot of meaning to him.
I probably don't understand what you mean.
I think that it's easy to be an atheist -- i.e. one doesn't have to make any difficult definitions or arguments to arrive at atheism, and those easy definitions and arguments are correct. If you think it's harder than I do, that would be interesting and could explain why we have such different opinions here.
Fine. Then the atheist who doesn't have a difficult definition of God, isn't culpably refusing to explain her "new idea", and someone who thinks there is something to be said about morality can stick with the vanilla definition that morality is Right and Wrong and Such.