= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Vladimir_Nesov comments on A Defense of Naive Metaethics - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (294)
It's the same boundary, just the other side. If you can learn of moral facts by observing things, if your knowledge refers to a joint description of moral and physical facts, state of your brain say as the physical counterpart, and so your understanding of moral facts benefits from better knowledge and further observation of physical facts, you shouldn't draw this boundary.
There is an asymmetry. We can only make physical observations, not moral observations.
This means that every state of knowledge about moral and physical facts maps to a state of knowledge about just physical facts, and the evolution of the 2nd is determined only by evidence, with no reference to moral facts.
To the extent we haven't defined what "moral observations" are exactly, so that the possibility isn't ruled out in a clear sense, I'd say that we can make moral observations, in the same sense in which we can make arithmetical observations by looking at a calculator display or consulting own understanding of mathematical facts maintained by brain.
That is, by deducing mathematical facts from new physical facts.
Can you deduce physical facts from new moral facts?
Not necessarily, you can just use physical equipment without having any understanding of how it operates or what it is, and the only facts you reason about are non-physical (even though you interact with physical facts, without reasoning about them).
Why not?
Because your only sources of new facts are your senses.
You can't infer new (to you) facts from information you already have? You can't just be told things? A martian,. being told that pre marital sex became less of an issue after the sixities might be able to deduce the physical fact that contraceptive technology was improved in the sixities.
I guess you could but you couldn't be a perfect Bayesian.
Generally, when one is told something, one becomes aware of this from one's senses, and then infers things from the physical fact that one is told.
I'm definitely not saying this right. The larger point I'm trying to make is that it makes sense to consider an agent's physical beliefs and ignore their moral beliefs. That is a well-defined thing to do.
Where does it say that? One needs good information, but the sense can err, and hearsay can be reliable.
The sense are of course involved in acquiring second hand information, but there is still a categoreal difference between showing and telling.
In order to achieve what?
Simplicity, maybe?
Also your thoughts, your reasoning, which is machinery for perceiving abstract facts, including moral facts.
How might one deduce new physical facts from new moral facts produced by abstract reasoning?
You can predict that (physical) human babies won't be eaten too often. Or that a calculator will have a physical configuration displaying something that you inferred abstractly.
You can make those arguments in an entirely physical fashion. You don't need the morality.
You do need the mathematical abstraction to bundle and unbundle physical facts.