TimFreeman comments on What is Metaethics? - Less Wrong

31 Post author: lukeprog 25 April 2011 04:53PM

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Comment author: TimFreeman 04 May 2011 05:31:15PM 0 points [-]

If that's a definition of morality, then morality is a subset of psychology, which probably isn't what you wanted.

If that's a valid argument, then logic, mathematics, etc are branches of psychology.

There's a difference between changing your mind because a discussion lead you to bound your rationality differently, and changing your mind because of suggestability and other forms of sloppy thinking. Logic and mathematics is the former, if done right. I haven't seen much non-sloppy thinking on the subject of changing preferences.

I suppose there could be such a thing -- Joe designed an elegant high-throughput gas chamber, he wants to show the design to his friends, someone tells Joe that this could be used for mass murder, Joe hadn't thought that the design might actually be used, so he hides his design somewhere so it won't be used. But that's changing Joe's belief about whether sharing his design is likely to cause mass murder, not changing Joe's preference about whether he wants mass murder to happen.

Are you saying there has never been any valid moral discourse or persuasion?

No, I'm saying that morality is a useless concept and that what you're calling moral discourse is some mixture of (valid change of beliefs based on reflection and presentation of evidence) and invalid emotional manipulation based on sloppy thinking involving, among other things, undefined and undefinable terms.

Comment author: Peterdjones 04 May 2011 07:42:54PM -2 points [-]

But that's changing Joe's belief about whether sharing his design is likely to cause mass murder, not changing Joe's preference about whether he wants mass murder to happen.

But there are other stories where the preference itself changes. "If you approve of womens rights, you should approve of Gay rights".

No, I'm saying that morality is a useless concept and that what you're calling moral discourse is some mixture of (valid change of beliefs based on reflection and presentation of evidence) and invalid emotional manipulation based on sloppy thinking involving, among other things, undefined and undefinable terms.

Everything is a mixture of the invalid and the valid. Why throw somethin out instead of doing it better?

Comment author: TimFreeman 04 May 2011 07:53:42PM *  2 points [-]

"If you approve of womens rights, you should approve of Gay rights".

IMO we should have gay rights because gays want them, not because moral suasion was used successfully on people opposed to gay rights. Even if your argument above worked, I can't envision a plausible reasoning system in which the argument is valid. Can you offer one? Otherwise, it only worked because the listener was confused, and we're back to morality being a special case of psychology again.

Everything is a mixture of the invalid and the valid. Why throw somethin out instead of doing it better?

Because I don't know how to do moral arguments better. So far as I can tell, they always seems to wind up either being wrong, or not being moral arguments.