Mitchell_Porter comments on The 5-Second Level - Less Wrong

111 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 07 May 2011 04:51AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (310)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 08 May 2011 08:32:48AM *  1 point [-]

I am still thinking this through. It's a very subtle topic. But having begun to think about it, the sheer number of arguments that I have found (which are in favor of preserving and employing the moral perspective) encourages me to believe that I was right - I'm just not sure where to place the emphasis! Of course there is such a thing as moral excess, addiction to moralizing, and so forth. But eschewing moral categories is psychologically and socially utopian (in a bad sense), the intersubjective character of the moral perspective has a lot going for it (it's cognitively holistic since it is about whole agents criticizing whole agents; you can't forgive someone unless you admit that they have wronged you; something about how you can't transcend the moral perspective, in the attractive emotional sense, unless you understand it by passing through it)... I wouldn't say it's just about computational utility.

Comment author: lukstafi 08 May 2011 12:28:39PM 0 points [-]

I must clarify that I've been concerned with contrasting the function of moralization, and the mechanism of moralization, which is ingrained very deeply to the effect that without enough praise children develop dysfunctionally, etc.