TimFreeman comments on Pluralistic Moral Reductionism - Less Wrong

33 Post author: lukeprog 01 June 2011 12:59AM

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Comment author: TimFreeman 07 June 2011 04:00:16AM 1 point [-]

I cannot provide [a murderer] compelling grounds as to why he ought not to have done what he did... [T]o punish him would be arbitrary.

If you don't want murderers running around killing people, then it's consistent with your values to set up a situation in which murderers can expect to be punished, and one way to do that is to actually punish murderers.

Yes, that's arbitrary, in the same sense that every preference you have is arbitrary. If you are going to act upon your preferences without deceiving yourself, you have to feel comfortable with doing arbitrary things.

Comment author: Peterdjones 07 June 2011 10:28:30AM 2 points [-]

I think you missed the point quite badly there. The point is that there is no rationally compelling reason to act on any arbitrary value. You gave the example of punishing murderers, but if every value is equally arbitrary that is no more justifiable than punishing stamp collectors or the left-handed. Having accepted moral subjectivism, you are faced with a choice between acting irrationality or not acting. OTOH, you haven't exactly given moral objectivism a run for its money.