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Vaniver comments on Conceptual Analysis and Moral Theory - Less Wrong
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Comments (456)
In order to answer this question, I'm switching to the anthropology of moral belief and practice (as lukeprog puts it here).
I don't think there's a single agreed-upon theory. The OP is part of lukeprog's sequence where he put forward a theory of meta-ethics he calls pluralistic moral reductionism, which he says here is not even an empathetic theory of meta-ethics, let alone applied ethics. Eliezer's sequence on meta-ethics suffers from the flaw that it's written 'in character,' and was not well-received. If you look at survey results, you see that the broadest statements we can make are things like "overall people here lean towards consequentialism."
Ok. You can't summarize it unambiguously either. So why do people believe it?
From Vaniver's comment:
What "it" are you speaking of?
The lesswrongian theory of ethics, If you don't believe there is such a singular entity, you couldn't say so...I'm hardly going to disagree.
I doubt you'll find anyone here seriously saying that we've found a definitive theory of metaethics. That is our eventual goal, yes, but right now, there are at best several competing theories. No absolutely correct theory has even been proposed, much less endorsed by the majority of LW. So the answer to your question ("Why do people believe it?") is, as far as I can tell, "They don't." My question, however, is why you think this is something really bad, as opposed to something just slightly bad.
If you look upthread, youll see that what I think is really bad is advising people not to study mainstream philosophy.
I also think it bad to call philosophy diseased for not being able to solve problems you can't solve either.
And it might be an idea to add a warning to the metaethics sequences: "Before reading these million words, please note that they don't go anywhere".