nshepperd comments on Conceptual Analysis and Moral Theory - Less Wrong

60 Post author: lukeprog 16 May 2011 06:28AM

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Comment author: Peterdjones 24 May 2011 02:33:03PM *  1 point [-]

From a rigorously scientific point of view, a human being is just a very complex, homeostatic electro-chemical system. It rattles about the surface of the earth governed by the laws of nature just like any other physical system. A thing considered thus (ie from a scientific pt of view) is not 'trying' to do anything, has no beliefs, no preferences (just varying dispositions), no purposes, is neither rational nor irrational, and has no values. Natural science does not see right or wrong, punkt.

I think that is rather drastic. Science may not accept beliefs and values as fundamental, but it can accept that as higher-level descriptions, cf Dennet's Intentional Stance.

can't be made sense of from a scientific point of view, but we recognize and need them, so we have to make sense of them otherwise.

Again, I find it incredible that natural facts have no relation to morality. Morality would be very different in women laid eggs or men had balls of steel.

Thought of from this point of view, all values are in some sense objective -ie, independent of you. There has to be a gap between value and actual behaviour, for the value to be made sense of as such (if everything you do is right, there is no right).

To say that moral values are both objective and disconnected from physical fact implies that they exist in their own domain, which is where some people,with some justice, tend to balk.

Prima facie, values are objective. Maybe on closer inspection it can be shown in some sense they aren't, but I submit the idea is not incoherent.

For some value of "incoherent". Personally, I find it useful to strike out the word and replace it with something more precise, such a "semantically meaningless", "contradictory", "self-underminng" etc.

Comment author: nshepperd 24 May 2011 03:30:49PM 1 point [-]

Again, I find it incredible that natural facts have no relation to morality. Morality would be very different in women laid eggs or men had balls of steel.

I take the position that while we may well have evolved with different values, they wouldn't be morality. "Morality" is subjunctively objective. Nothing to do with natural facts, except insofar as they give us clues about what values we in fact did evolve with.

Comment author: Peterdjones 24 May 2011 04:25:02PM 1 point [-]

I take the position that while we may well have evolved with different values, they wouldn't be morality.

How do you know that the values we have evolved with are moral? (The claim that natural facts are relevant to moral reasoning is different to the claim that natually-evolved behavioural instincts are ipso facto moral)

Comment author: nshepperd 25 May 2011 03:51:00AM 0 points [-]

I'm not sure what you want to know. I feel motivated to be moral, and the things that motivate thinking machines are what I call "values". Hence, our values are moral.

But of course naturally-evolved values are not moral simply by virtue of being values. Morality isn't about values, it's about life and death and happiness and sadness and many other things beside.