Garren comments on Pluralistic Moral Reductionism - Less Wrong

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

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

Comments (316)

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

Comment author: Peterdjones 06 June 2011 04:16:55PM 0 points [-]

What's contradictory about the same object being judged differently by different standards?

Nothing. There's nothing contradictory about multiple subjective truths or about multiple opinions, or about a single objective truth. But there is a contradiction in multiple objective truths about morality, as I said.

Here's a standard: return the width of the object in meters. Here's another: return the number of wavelengths of blue light that make up the width of the object. And another: return the number of electrons in the object.

There isn't any contradiction in multiple objective truths about different things; but the original hypothesis was multiple objective truths about the same thing, ie the morality of an action. If you are going to say that John-morality and Mary-morality are different things, that is effectively conceding that they are subjective.

Comment author: Garren 07 June 2011 04:34:17AM 0 points [-]

If you are going to say that John-morality and Mary-morality are different things, that is effectively conceding that they are subjective.

The focus doesn't have to be on John and Mary; it can be on the morality we're referencing via John and Mary. By analogy, we could talk about John's hometown and Mary's hometown, without being subjectivists about the cities we are referencing.

Comment author: Peterdjones 07 June 2011 11:03:07AM 1 point [-]

That isn't analogous, because towns aren;'t epistemic.